Family is Part Three: Family You Make
by Phoebe Darling
Summary: Everything seems to go wrong for Renee, Horatio Caine's half sister. First her and James are car jacked. Then she is drugged. Her reunion goes sideways, causing Renee to develop PTSD. She then gets real sick. Will it ever work out for her? Will she ever be safe from even herself?
1. Chapter: Learnin to Live Again

Renee and Piper are out shopping for new clothes for Piper. Charlie and Echo were back at the house with James. With Piper in the changing room, Renee leans against one of the store's round clothes racks.  
She has a pain in her abdominal area. Renee does what Renee does best. She pushes the pain back like nothing happened. Shortly after the pain passes, Piper walks out in a new pair of bottoms. She wanted Renee's opinion of the cargo pants.  
"Those look like they were made for you," Renee tells the teen as Piper goes back. To get back in her old clothes, Renee is hit with another wave of pain. This one was worse than the first one.  
She grabbed onto the bar of the round rack, Renee braces for the pain. Again the pain subsides. Renee is still learning that telling people you are in pain is not a sign of weakness.  
Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. The simple fact of feeling pain is not a sign of weakness. Renee is Marine strong, a little too hard-headed for her own good.  
Piper comes out, and she can't find Renee, where she left her. Quickly she calls Nae's cell phone. When she heard the phone ringing, she followed the sound. Walking around a corner, she finds Renee on her knees. Renee was face down on her knees.  
"Nae, are you okay? What's wrong?" Piper asks Renee.  
"I'm fine, its just a little stomach ache," She responds to the teen's inquiry.  
Renee is not able to get to her feet, as her knees buckle out from under her.  
"I'm okay, I just need a few minutes," Renee is practically begging the girl not to call her father.  
When again Renee is unable to stand, the girl ignores Renee's pleas and calls her dad.  
"Daddy, We are at the mall in Cabbalas, Renee cant stand. Every time she tries, her knees buckle out from under her. She says she is fine. I don't believe her for a minute. Renee just says that it's a stomach ache. I need your help to get her home or to the doctors. Whichever one you think we should do. Renee is going to protest either way.  
"Sweetie, I'll be right there," James tells his daughter as he rushes to his truck. They live only about ten minutes from Cabbalas.  
Running into the store, he finds Piper waiting for him near the entrance. Quickly she takes her dad to where Renee had hidden herself.  
By this time, Renee was curled up in the fetal position, in complete agony. She would still not admit she was in pain.  
"James, what are you doing here? I'm fine. I…" Renee can't finish the sentence since another wave of pain hits her.  
Gently James lifts Renee's shirt to look at where the pain was at. He could clearly see Renee's nerves and muscles are tensing up every few seconds. He can clearly see what Renee refuses to admit. She was obviously in severe pain.  
"I'm here because you are in pain but are too damn stubborn to admit it. You need to go to the doctors. No point in arguing with me about it," James says as he picks Renee up off the ground and carries her back to his truck.  
Right after he picks her up, Renee passes out from the pain that she was hiding. Getting to the hospital, James carries an unconscious Renee into the Emergency Room of the hospital. Since Renee was not conscious, she was rushed in without needing to stay in triage.  
"Where did she complain about the pain?" Renee's doctors ask James.  
"She was holding her lower intestines on her left side. I think that it's her Appendix."  
Renee finally wakes up after the doctor finished with Renee's ultrasound. The ultrasound revealed a ruptured appendix. They needed to go in and remove the busted Appendix and drain the fluid. They needed to try to stop the Marine from going into septic shock.  
"I'm fine. It is just a stomach ache," Renee was still trying to tell the doctors. She was still in denial about the whole situation.  
Renee is trying to argue with James when the doctor shows the Marine her ultrasound. Her doctor points out the ruptured Appendix. That is not supposed to look like that. It has to go, or you will die. If you go septic, you will die a painful death. Your body doesn't need it."  
"There is no point in trying to argue with her. You will not win. Just let me talk to her," James tells an exasperated doctor.  
Alone with his fiancé, James tries to talk some sense into her. Getting nowhere, he calls out the big guns.  
"Nae, if you don't do this on your own. I will have no choice but to call Horatio. He will make the choice for you. Don't make me call your brother.  
Realizing that she was not going to win the argument, Renee agrees to the operation.  
The operation was not a long one. By the time she came out of it, James had called her brother.  
Renee knows that her brother is getting tired of getting the crap scared out of him. He is tired of being scared for her life every time the phone rings. Looking at his sister, an exhausted Horatio tells her something.  
"When will you learn. There is nothing, and I mean nothing wrong with admitting you are in pain. Nothing is wrong with asking for help or with telling people you need them," Horatio tells his sister.  
The hospital didn't keep her too long after her surgery. They just wanted to give her a course of IV antibiotics. The antibiotics would hopefully kill any bacteria that leaked when her appendix burst.  
Renee didn't make it easy for the nurses or doctors. They were really tired of stopping Renee from escaping and making a run for it.  
Her doctor didn't want Renee to go surfing until her incision healed. Instead of surfing with James and Piper, Renee took them all on day trips to the everglades. Renee would never leave the dogs out of the adventures, so Echo, Charlie, and Piper's puppy Indy would all join in the fun.  
"Honey, you need to lower your pain tolerance. It needs to be dialed back from a twenty to a manageable ten. We will all help you since you just cannot have a tolerance level higher than your body can handle. You passed out from the pain right after I got to the store," James tells an exhausted Renee.  
"Baby, you need to learn how to live again. Your brother, Piper, and I are willing to move heaven and earth to help you. We love you more than you know," James tries to reassure Renee.  
Renee has never needed anyone in her life. Now she can't function without James or Horatio. She needs her brother and fiancé in her life. The two men, along with Charlie, keep the PTSD episodes at bay. They have been the only things that can snap her out of an episode.  
Her brother's team and Piper all do their best to keep Renee safe and away from situations that might trigger an episode. Renee has been retraining Echo her police canine to detect an approaching episode. Charlie was so in-tuned with Renee and her emotional needs than Echo.  
With no training, Renee's retired Marine canine partner, Charlie, was alerting to and redirecting Renee's attention away from the triggering event. The dog never misses an episode. Echo has been alerting to about half of the episodes that Renee has.  
As of now, Charlie, James, or Horatio have to be with Renee at all times. One of them needs to be with her. Both Charlie and James live for Renee, and they know it is the other way around too. Renee needs both Charlie and James also.


	2. Chapter: Lessons Learned Renee

Chapter: Lesson Learned; Renee's Lesson

About two months after Renee's appendix had burst and she needed emergency surgery to remove it, Renee was just starting to go out again. Since her assault in Beaumont, Texas, she had been too scared to go out without James, Echo, or Horatio.

Renee was going to take Piper's puppy Indy on a training walk. She wanted to involve Piper in the training of her dog, so Renee goes to the girl's room to ask if she wanted to come with her.

"Piper, Sweetheart, Do you want to come with me and Indy on a training walk," Renee asked the young teen.

"Can't, I have an A.P Physics final coming up. I need to study," is what Piper tells Renee.

With that, Renee grabbed Indy's leash and left the house with the puppy. She wouldn't leave Piper home without a dog to protect her. Charlie was getting too old to protect, so Renee left Echo her police dog with Piper. Renee would take her Desert Eagle chambered in 50 AE extreme penetration jacketed hollow point with her for protection. She mainly took a firearm to protect against alligators, not people.

After about two miles walking deep into the Everglades, Renee started to feel uneasy. She thought that she was being followed. When she looked around Renee didn't see anything. Chalking it up to her PTSD, Renee kept going with the training walk. Her uneasy feeling, however, was very much warranted. Before she could react, Renee was almost knocked down. She had her phone in her hand when she was hit from behind. Looking down at the phone in her hand, Renee sees blood dripping down her arm. Before Renee's mind can process what happened, she is actually knocked down after she is hit from behind again.. Falling down onto her knees then her back Renee was unable to move. Feeling intense pain in both of her shoulders, she quickly loses consciousness. She never had a chance to draw her weapon. Renee left pools of blood and bloody drag marks when her attackers take her. By this time Indy had taken off from getting spooked.

**Back at the House**

Immersed in her studies, Piper didn't notice how long Renee had been gone until she heard a dog barking. The dog was trying to open the door, so Piper went to let the dog in. She thought that Renee was teaching the home command, so she sat by the door and waited for Renee to come walking down her long driveway.

When James comes home and not Renee, Piper realized that her dad's fiancé had been gone for six or more hours.

"Daddy, Nae took Indy for a walk hours ago. Indy just came home by herself. I have no idea where Nae is though. I haven't seen her in at least six hours," Piper explains to her dad.

"Piper, Sweetie, you stay here in case Nae comes home," James tells his daughter.

"Here Indy," James calls his daughter's dog. He wanted to look to see if the pup had brought any clues as to what happened to Renee. That is when he noticed a little bit of blood on the dogs paws and on her leash.

He knew something was not right, so he calls Echo.

"Where's mom? Go find mom," he asked the police dog.

If anyone could find Renee, it would be Echo. The dog took off running down the long driveway. Echo ran so fast, James was not able to get into the truck, so he ran after the dog on foot.

Echo took him on the normal walk route. Two miles out into the Everglades, the dog stopped and put her nose to the ground. She was barking and pawing something on the grass. Echo was alerting James to what she found.

Getting near Echo, James kneels down to see what it was that Echo had found. The dog had found Renee's cell phone. James knew it was Nae's since it was still in her fluorescent pink phone case.

The phone had landed face up, so when James picked it up, he didn't notice the blood on the back. Once the phone was in his hands, and face up he felt that the back was wet. He knew it had not rained so it should not be wet. Turning the phone over, he saw a bloody handprint. Seeing that, he looks at the ground better.

Upon closer inspection, James can clearly see pools of blood on the ground. He also saw bloody drag marks and obvious signs of a struggle. Following the blood trail, James finds Nae's Desert Eagle lying in a pool of blood. Using his sleeve, James picks up the firearm. He quickly realizes that Renee had never had a chance to pull it since the magazine was full and there was still a bullet in the chamber.

His mind was racing, thinking about what could have happened to Renee, when his phone rings.

The caller ID said unknown, but something inside of him told him to answer this call.

"Hello," is all James can get out before an obviously altered voice comes on.

"We have your fiancé, We want one million dollars in unmarked bills, or she's dead. We know who she is so feel free to involve the cops. You will never be able to find us. We will call you in five hours with instructions on the drop-off," the voice ends before James can ask for proof of life.

**Where ever Renee was Being Held**

Her kidnappers dragged an unconscious Renee into a dark and wet concrete room. Once in the room they proceed to strip her down. Once stripped, they then kick her repeatedly in the ribs, the kicks break several of her ribs. In an attempt to weaken her to the point where she was completely and totally helpless they then stab her in the chest area. Renee could barely breathe it hurt too much. The stab had partially collapsed her left lung.

She had already been stripped of everything. Once stripped, they throw Renee onto the wet floor. She lands almost face down in a small water puddle. She was lying on her stomach, unconscious on a cold and very wet cement floor. When Renee regains consciousness, she tries to move, but it hurt too much. She simply rolled over to be in the fetal position. Renee has no idea where she is or what happened to her. She did know that she had been stripped since she was very cold and wet.

From where she was lying, Renee could hear two people talking as they walked towards her before she loses consciousness again.

**Back at the Crime Scene**

The second the ransom phone call had ended, James was calling Horatio. He knew he needed help.

Horatio answers James phone call, "James, what's wrong? Did something happen to Nae?" By now, Horatio knew a call from James and not from Renee was bad news.

"Based on what I am looking at and the phone call I just received, someone kidnapped her and they are holding her for ransom," James practically shouted at Horatio on the phone.

"Where are you, James? I'll be right there," Horatio was demanding the location. James didn't know his exact location so Horatio gets Dave Benton the teams A.V guy triangulate James location using his cell phone's GPS. Horatio gets to where James was by using the MDPD helicopter, and they brainstorm. With this being a possible kidnapping, Horatio used all his available resources to find his sister.

Renee had taken Indy into the Everglades, in a very remote area. Both James and Horatio search the immediate vicinity for any more evidence. Thinking about how they could find Renee, Horatio remembered his sister had a smartwatch with a powerful GPS.

"We can trace her smartwatch. That saved her life twice already," Horatio was talking out loud.

Making eye contact with James before his heart sinks.

"You mean this smartwatch," as he picks up a broken TAG Haute Smartwatch. James was wearing a pair of latex gloves that Horatio had given to him before they started searching for evidence.

"Oh God, that was the only way to find her," Horatio needed to find his sister.

James tells Horatio what the kidnappers were demanding and about the money that Renee had just inherited from the General.

"The kidnappers said that they want one million in unmarked bills and I have five hours to get it. Renee's friend you met, General Parker died and left her two million four hundred fifty thousand dollars plus at least fifty thousand in old savings bonds and war bonds. I can have the money in less than an hour," is what James tells Horatio.

**Meanwhile at Renee's House**

After two hours, the phone rings again. It is the kidnapper's calling. This time it was a video chat. In a dimly lit location, James and Horatio can just make out Renee. She is tied to a chair and was very bloody. James could tell that his fiancé had been stripped to her underwear since he could see blood covering her chest. He also knew she had been stabbed earlier since she was already covered in blood before they hit her on camera.

They then see someone hit Renee in the face several times. The rage inside of both James and Horatio began to boil over. Then they can clearly see someone take out a knife and stab Renee several times in the abdomen. The video ends. It was obvious the kidnappers wanted to torture James. They wanted him to suffer, not knowing what happened to his fiancé.

**In the Meantime Back with Renee.**

Renee passes out from the stab wounds in her torso and abdominal area. She doesn't know how long she was unconscious. All she knows is that she was in excruciating pain, so she was not able to think straight.

Her kidnappers knew exactly where to stab her so she would not bleed to death, but the wounds would still cause her extreme pain.

With Renee in the fetal position on the cold and wet concrete floor, she can only pray they find her in time. By this time Renee could feel herself starting to shiver, she was just so cold. She was in no position to fight back or resist because she was just so weak.

As she lay on the ground bleeding, she can hear the sounds of someone approaching where she was lying.

From where she was, Renee could hear her kidnappers talking to each other. She could hear their plans and they were not good.

"Even if O'Shea pays, she still dies. Only we will make him watch, then we will kill his daughter. We want him to be forced to live with the fact that he killed his fiancé and daughter leaving him alone," the leader told his follower.

"Let's send him another video, this time can I do it?" His follower asks the leader.

Renee never hears the answer to the follower's question, since the two kidnappers walk into where Renee was being held.

The leader picks Renee up off the ground like she was nothing. Tying her to a chair and gagging her, Renee was in no position to resist.

Renee thought to herself, the money is just a decoy. James is the real target. The kidnappers really want to torture James.

**Back with James and Horatio**

The two of them are back at Renee's house. Waiting for the phone call about the money exchange. When again, James's phone rings. Again it is a video chat.

"If you ever want to see your fiancé alive again, you will do exactly what we say. If you want proof of life, how's this for proof of life." The leader then takes the gag off of Renee's mouth. He makes Renee look at the camera. Neither James nor Horatio were able to see the leaders face. James and Horatio could see that Renee was fighting to stay conscious. After the leader nods yes to his follower, the follower then proceeds to shoot Renee in the right thigh. Renee screams out in pain. The video feed cuts, leaving James shaking in anger. After the video cuts, James gets a text giving him instructions on where the money exchange would happen.

They lure James out to an isolated location alone to trade the money for Renee. It was way out at the end of South West 136th in the Everglades. James had an hour to get to the location. He was willing to do anything to save Renee. By this time both James and Horatio knew it was not about the money. They knew that based on the two video calls. The kidnappers were hurting Renee and by proxy James. He knew it was a trap but James didn't care.

Once he was at the location of the trade he saw that Renee was not there. Standing at a safe distance Horatio talked James through it through the earwig that they both had.

"They aren't coming, H," James was getting nervous.

"They will be here James, just relax," Horatio reassures James.

"Here he is, he is approaching at your six o'clock," Horatio tells James to look to his left a little. Before Horatio or James can react the follower then goes off script. They shoot James in the chest right when Horatio takes the follower out. Horatio takes the follower out with a single shot between the eyes. He drops dead instantly. James falls to his knees then onto his back. He lies there bleeding from a gunshot to the chest.

Horatio knew they needed to find Renee a different way. Horatio had been the sniper for this job. Rushing down the hill, he takes off his jacket as he runs. Getting to James he puts pressure on James's chest wound, using his coat. James quickly loses consciousness in Horatio's arms

"James, stay with me. I need you to fight this, come on buddy, stay with me," Horatio encourages his soon to be brothers-in-law to fight for his life.

They still need to find Renee, but how? This was only one of her kidnappers.

Horatio had a team of officers on standby just waiting for the signal. Horatio gave the signal, and they all rush to his location. Rushing James to Mercy General, Horatio has Eric process the crime scene and collect the evidence.

Again Horatio needs to trust his team to follow the evidence to save his sister. Horatio was not going to leave either Piper nor James alone in the hospital.

However, he was desperate to locate Renee. Ryan finds some trace evidence in the tread of the kidnapper's boots. Hoping that the evidence would narrow the search area down, Eric has Ryan run the trace through their database.

James is rushed into the nearest trauma one center, with a gunshot to the chest. As James is run into surgery, Horatio has Calleigh go and bring Piper to the hospital. Horatio was going to have Calleigh stay with Piper and James. He was going to find his sister and kill the kidnappers if it killed him.

"Piper, we have to go to the hospital. It's your daddy, he was shot. We still have not found Nae. Don't worry, Sweetheart I'll stay with you the whole time," Calleigh tells the teenager who promptly breaks down crying.

With Horatio at the lab, the team ran the trace evidence found on the follower's shoes. Apparently, it is only found at a single location.

Unfortunately, it is the location of a huge and vast warehouse. The warehouse was located clear on the other side of the city as the lab. They didn't have time to go to Renee's house to get Echo. Horatio and his team were going to have to clear it by hand.

**Meanwhile Back with Renee**

Renee had no strength left in her every breath was a struggle. Every second was a battle to remain conscious. After her captors shot her in the right thigh, they dragged her back to the room that they had been holding her in.

Getting to the door, they throw Renee inside on the ground. She had no energy, she couldn't even roll over onto her side. Renee just lay there on her stomach. She was barely able to turn her head to the left, so she was not face down in the water puddle that they had thrown her down into. The only sounds in her room were the quiet moans from her and the drip… drip… drip… of water droplets hitting the puddle that she was lying in. She was so cold by this time. Her body had stopped shivering, since she was beyond shivering.

Renee was tired of fighting for her life. She didn't want to die, but she was getting weak from shock and blood loss. Slipping in and out of consciousness, Renee was really fighting to live.

With one stab wound to each of her shoulder blades, three to the stomach, one to the chest, a partially collapsed lung, and a gunshot to the right thigh, Renee was hurting.

When she was stabbed in the back, the blade had gone through both of her shoulder blades. As her attacker stabbed her in the stomach and chest, they placed their stabs very strategically. They wanted to cause her and by proxy James as much pain possible without her dying on them.

Renee just lay on the cold and wet concrete floor, slowly bleeding to death. Renee didn't want to die but by now she had accepted it.

She did know that James and Horatio would never get over her death. Renee knew she was so tired of fighting to live. As Renee lay there she felt that she had failed to keep James safe from both physical and emotional trauma. Since she met him, Renee told herself that she would keep him safe if it killed her.

Lying there she thought back to all the times that she kept James safe. She never told James about her lung collapsing when she fell off her friends horse, nor did she tell him about being buried alive by the drug dealer in New Orleans. Renee had kept falling off of her nine story hotel from James. Along with the fact that Renee was getting electrocuted while she fell. Renee was slowed down by the slanted roof of the lower building. The backpack she was wearing got snagged on the gutter of the lower building so she fell the last thirty feet from a stand still. Ultimately the hotels canopy slowed her enough for her to survive. Getting home she saved James from bleeding to death after he was shot by the carjacker. She tried to protect him so many times but she was not able to protect him this time.

**Back at the Hospital**

With the ambulance carrying James is pulling up to Mercy General, Alexx runs outside to help with her friend.

"Get a trauma room ready, we have a gunshot to the chest. He lost a lot of blood. The victim's in his late thirty's and he has been slipping in and out of consciousness," the paramedic is explaining what happened to Alexx.

"Nae… Nae… Where's Nae…," Alexx can hear James whispering as he fought to remain conscious.

"Sweetie, Horatio will find Nae. Just stay with me, Baby," Alexx reassures James as he loses consciousness again.

Running with the ambulance, Alexx rushes to save her friend.

Alexx goes with James as they rush him into trauma room two. During the four hour surgery to remove the 9mm bullet lodged near his lungs, James crashed. It takes several shocks to his heart to restart it.

A few minutes after James arrived at the hospital, Calleigh and Piper run into the waiting room of the trauma wing of the hospital.

"We are here for James O'Shea, Is he okay," Calleigh asks the receptionist at the front desk.

Alexx finally comes out to talk to Piper and Calleigh about James.

"Sweetheart, your daddy had been shot in the chest. We managed to stabilize him, but he slipped into a coma and is in critical condition," Alexx explains what happened to Piper.

Alexx then leads the teenager back to her dad's room. James laid on his hospital bed, intubated, and fighting for his life.

Horatio wanted to run the trace analysis himself. He just had to find his sister. The evidence led the team to a vast abandoned property. With no idea where his sister was, Horatio had a large team of officers go with him to clear the property.

**Meanwhile at the Kidnappers Location**

At this point in time, Horatio was where Renee was being held. He, however, had no idea where she was. Upon making entry to the building, they were met by the leader. This caused a shootout between Horatio's team and the kidnapper.

With all of the kidnapper's attention and fire power on the front entrance, Horatio was able to come up behind him.

Pointing his gun at the kidnapper, "Your move," Horatio tells the leader, as he cocks the hammer of his Sig Sauer.

At this point in time, Horatio was begging for a reason to shoot the kidnapper. He does get a reason to kill them when the kidnapper makes a move to turn around and shoot Horatio. Pulling the trigger three times, the kidnapper drops down to the floor dead. Horatio had put two bullets in the kidnappers chest and one in his head.

Horatio had killed the kidnapper, but he still needed to find his sister. As the team continues to clear the building, Horatio took the lead.

Coming around a corner, Horatio sees a metal chair with a length of bloody rope. He found where they had tortured and shot his sister. Horatio also found a pile of clothes that he instantly recognized as belonging to his sister. At that time, Horatio noticed bloody drag marks on the concrete. With Renee being gone eighteen hours, Horatio knew that they were running out of time to find her alive. He knows that most kidnapped victims not found in the first twenty four hours are not found alive.

With his gun drawn, Horatio follows the drag marks. The drag marks lead him down a narrow, dark, and wet hallway. At the end of the hallway, the marks stop at a closed door.

Slowly and carefully, Horatio opens the door, not knowing what he was going to find. Swinging the door open, Horatio finds it empty. The only thing in the room was the form of someone on the floor in the middle of the room.

Rushing to the body, Horatio gently turns it over. With no light he was not able to recognize who it was. The victim's eyes were closed, and they were cold to the touch. It looked like the victim had given up on life.

Using his guns light to see, he carefully opens one of the victim's eyes. He just had to know if it was his sister. Seeing his sister's ice-blue eyes, Horatio quickly checks for a pulse.

His sister was alive but barely. Renee's breathing and pulse were both so weak, he could hardly feel them. Horatio calls for an ambulance to meet him at the front entrance of the property. As he picks up his sister, Horatio couldn't help but notice that his sister was just so cold in his arms. Looking down after he had picked up his sister, he sees the rather large pool of blood that had formed under her. Picking up her limp body, he runs to get his sister out of the building.

By the time Horatio had gotten to the front entrance, the ambulance was waiting to take Renee to the hospital.

The medics were desperate to stop her bleeding.

"I have the same blood type as my sister, you can use my blood to buy you time to stop her bleeding," Horatio tells the paramedics.

The paramedics then connect an IV line directly from Horatio to his sister. This was only going to work until they get to the hospital. Then Renee was going to be rushed into surgery to stop her bleeding and remove the bullet in her leg.

**Back at the Hospital**

When the ambulance pulls up to the ambulance bay, Horatio was quickly disconnected from his sister. The paramedics leave poor Horatio on the bus, staring blankly at the wall.

"Baby, come on. I'll take you inside. Piper needs you. There is nothing you can do for Renee," Alexx coaxes Horatio out of the ambulance and into James's hospital room.

"I'll come and find you when I get any news on Renee," Alexx tells Horatio as she walks out of the room.

This left Horatio, Piper, and Calleigh inside the room with James, who was still in critical condition.

"What happened to daddy? Where's Nae?" Piper pleads with Horatio for any new information on her dad and his fiancé.

"Sweetie, someone kidnapped Nae. They asked for money, but it was not about money at all. Your dad and I knew it was not about the money since the kidnappers kept sending videos of them hurting Nae. Your daddy knew it was a trap he was walking into, but he didn't care. He just had to save Nae. They shot your daddy and left the money. I did shoot and kill them. We found Nae in an abandoned building, but she was barely alive. She is in surgery now," Horatio explains what happened to both her father and his fiancé. He knew that Piper was very fond of Renee.

Renee was in surgery for five hours. She did survive the surgery, but barely. For two days, it was Renee and James in the same room. Neither was conscious. This left poor Piper and Horatio sitting by their family members, not knowing if they would live.

When Renee had been put in her recovery room her heart stopped. Alexx needed to push Piper and Horatio out of the room to try to restart it. Shocking her heart multiple times, Alexx was getting desperate.

"Get me an amp of Epinephrine," Alexx shouts to a nurse. The nurse rushed off and came back with the drug often used to restart a heart. Injecting the drug into Renee's IV they wait a few seconds to see if it worked. When it didn't Alexx skipped over the other drug of Atropine and went straight to Intra-Cardiac Adrenaline. Stabbing the drug straight into Renee's heart. Renee responds to this drug by sitting bolt upright with her eye's open. Falling back on the bed she was still not conscious.

During the third day after the kidnapping and shooting, Renee finally wakes up. She opens her eyes long before James does.

"Where's James, H? What happened to James?" Renee asks when she wakes up from her coma.

Renee didn't almost die from the injuries, but rather from extreme blood loss. Like she did after James and Renee had been car jacked, Horatio steps to the side and pulls the curtain away, this time it revealed a still critical James. Last time it revealed a critical Renee.

"What did you do to yourself, Baby," Horatio could hear Renee ask an unconscious James.

Renee was released a few days after she woke up. After Renee was released James crashes again. This time he didn't respond to the shocks to his heart. Alexx pushes Renee, Horatio, and Piper out of the room. She just had to restart his heart. At first Alexx tries to shock his heart back into rhythm. His body jerked with each shock to his heart. Using Atropine as the first drug. When that didn't work, Alexx tries Epinephrine. This drug worked and James's pulse started to get stronger and stronger.

While Alexx was trying to restart James's heart, Renee was shielding Piper from watching her dad crash. The teen already watched as her mom was murdered when she was only two years old. From where they were standing Renee and Piper could hear the trilling of the charging defibrillator and hear the zap of electricity. They could see his body jerk with each of the shocks, Piper was crying into Renee's chest by the second shock.

Several days later James was still in critical condition, but they felt he was stable enough to remove his intubation. However, he was not improving. Sitting in her wheelchair, Renee sat at James' side everyday. Taking his hand, Renee finally realizes what James had to have been through every time that she had been injured.

Renee just sits there, holding James's hand and crying. This was a lesson that Renee had finally learned, but she learned it the hard way. She now knows what it is like to have the most important person in their lives, lying in a hospital bed between life and death.

All her life Renee has always put other's wellbeing above her own. She was always willing to die to protect other's that's why she joined the Marine Corps, then the Border Patrol. Where she transferred to the MDPD. She only recently became a Military Contractor for Contract Working Dogs. She has never been that important to anyone.

Her mom loved her, but would understand why she sacrificed herself for others. That is how her mom raised her. Having Horatio come into her life then James coming back into her life, has been a change in life's circumstances for her.

Renee has always loved James from the moment she met him in boot camp. However, she was convinced that no boy would ever want to date her so she wanted to find James a girl to marry. The whole time, James had loved her back. Neither would ever talk about their feelings since they were Marines after all.

Sitting by James's side watching him in his coma was more life changing than all of her injuries combined.

"Baby, come on, wake up. I'm okay, you saved me. Please wake up, Honey I can't do this without you. None of this is your fault. Come on, Baby, open your eyes," Renee begs James to wake up.

Horatio had taken Piper down to get food, this left Renee alone with James. She was still holding his hand when she put her head down on the side of James's bed. Crying uncontrollably, Renee never noticed James open his eyes.

Not seeing James wake up, she is very startled when he squeezes her hand. Looking up, Renee just starts to cry more.

Before she can say anything, James wipes her tears away when he let go of her hand.

"Shhhh… Baby, please don't cry. I hate to see you cry," James reassures Renee.

Gathering up enough strength, Renee scoots over from her chair onto the edge of James's bed.

James could see Renee wince with pain as she sits on his bed. Renee puts James's hand to her lips, and kisses it again.

"James, Baby, what were you thinking? You have a daughter? Why would you sacrifice your life for me? No one has ever done anything like that for me ever," Renee ask James a few minutes after he woke up.

Looking at his fiancé lovingly, James tells her something that sounds very simple but for her it was anything but simple.

"Because, I love you. You do crazy things when you are in love."

When Renee finds out that James loves her as much as she loves him, it was as if a vail was lifted over her eyes.

After a few minutes of Renee and James looking at each other smiling, Piper and Horatio walk back into the room.

From where they were standing, they could only see Renee sitting on the side of James's bed. Hearing them behind her, Renee moves over ever so slightly, Piper could clearly see that her daddy was awake.

"Daddy," Piper screamed as she ran over to the side of James's bed.

Piper runs to sit by her daddy on the other side of his bed.

Seeing that Horatio smiles at James.

"James, we got them, they are both dead. We are still trying to find a connection between you and them. It might have something to do with your time back in Afghanistan. They are both of Afghani descent," Horatio tells a clearly worried James.

When Renee and James saw a photo of the lead kidnapper they were shocked.

"Wait, that's the leader? He looks a lot like one of the fighters when I called in the air strike," Renee says as she looks at James for affirmation.

"Yeah, he also looks like one of the shooters when we were ambushed. One of the ones that Charlie took out. You remember, in the gun turret," James replies to Renee's thought.

When they realize that, the two war hardened Marines were able to figure out the connection between the kidnappers and James.


	3. Chapter: Lessons Learned James

Chapter: Lesson Learned; James's Lesson

It had been two months since Renee had been kidnapped. Her body took a month to heal from her six stab wounds and the gunshot to her right thigh. Renee took a month longer to heal psychologically from the trauma of her abuse. After those two long months of locking herself in her house, she was just starting to go outside of her property. Renee would always be downstairs to greet James when he would get home from work. James would drop Piper off at school, then go to work at the base. He was the bases range instructor, so it was his job to teach shooting to the new sniper recruits.

One day James went straight home after he dropped his daughter off instead of going to the base. He never told Renee of his plan to come home early as he wanted to surprise her. That morning, James had gotten dressed in his everyday dress uniform since he told Renee he was going to the base. As the garage door opens, he finds Echo, Charlie, and Indy tranquilized on the garage floor. They all had a Ketamine dart sticking out of their backs. Seeing that the hair on the back of his neck stood up. Walking around the house to the front door, he finds it kicked in. Over the last three weeks, there have been four break-ins that lead to physical assaults and murders in the neighborhood.

James knew that Renee would not go quietly, so he ran inside to find his fiancé. Searching the main floor, he hears a loud thud coming from upstairs. He ran upstairs, taking them two at a time. Getting to the master bedroom, James thinks he hears male voices coming from the other side. Not wanting the intruders to know he was there, he proceeds to kick it open.

The force of his kick nearly knocked the door off its hinges.

Walking into Renee's room, it takes him a few minutes to register what he was seeing. He comes in and finds Renee on her back with a needle and syringe sticking out of her back. The syringe was at a steep downward angle, so James knew that someone else had drugged her.

Just as it dawned on him what was happening, he feels someone hit him in the head with what he thought was the butt of a pistol handle. Someone had pistol-whipped him. The next thing he knows, he is lying on the floor tied up.

James still saw double, but what he saw, he wished he could unsee. Someone he didn't recognize was tying Renee to the bed. James could feel that the three of them were not alone. He feels himself losing consciousness again from his head injury. He fought it as long as he could, but he lost the battle after a while.

Regaining consciousness, James tries to free his knife he keeps in his combat boots. He just had to free himself and save Nae. By this time, the second assailant was getting ready to have his turn with Renee.

Renee had been drugged by a very powerful sedative. James just hoped that it was Flunitrazepam, also known as Rohypnol. Rohypnol routinely causes amnesia as a common side-effect. At least that way, Renee would not remember what was happening to her.

Renee never makes a noise or moves the entire time her assault was happening. It was, however, a nightmare for James that he could not wake up from.

When the first assault happened in the neighborhood, James had wanted Renee to install a simply safe security system in her house. Renee, however, was too stubborn and was convinced that no one would be stupid enough to rob from a cop's house.

Now he really wished that he had pushed her into it or just put it in himself. James was beating himself up, but he couldn't dwell on that now. Now he needed to get himself out of the binds that bound him and get Renee to the hospital to take care of her. She was completely out of it. Not only was his fiancé not conscious, but she was so out of it, her assailants were moving her around, and she looked like a rag doll.

From where James was lying on the hardwood floor, he could clearly see Renee fall off the bed. She landed on the hardwood floor limp and lifeless. Before her assault started, one of the attackers had tied her to the bed, but he screwed up, and somehow she got loose. One of her other attackers then picks her up and throws her back down on the bed. The assailants then tie her to the bed frame so that wouldn't happen again. Renee's bed was a four-poster canopy bed.

Renee still had not moved a muscle or made a sound the entire assault. James was terrified that Renee had died. She was obviously sedated heavily. He just had to get Renee help. He had to get himself free from the binding that he was tied up with.

Based on the feeling on his wrists, he knew it was a heavy rope. James had almost freed his knife he had hidden in his combat boot lining. He knew he was going to have to work hard to cut himself free.

By now, her first assailant had already left, leaving two others behind to finish. Before he left, he handed one of the others a small Glock 19, before he tells them something that sent chills down James's spine.

"No survivors, no witnesses. You know what to do," is what James overhears one assailant telling another before they left.

James knew he was running out of time. If he didn't act fast, his daughter would come home from school to find her daddy tied up and shot. As well as Renee shot and tied to the bed, At last, he had gotten his knife out, now he just needed to cut himself free without drawing unneeded attention to himself.

When the second assailant had finished, James finally gets himself free. The instant James was free, he bum-rushed the attacker. The two of them end up in a fight. The second assailant landed a couple solid hits to James's chest. James had managed to get more than a few hits to the attackers head. Eventually getting behind the attacker, James has the assailant in a sleeper/ chokehold. James just needed to put constant pressure on the two main blood vessels going to and from the brain and hold on until the attacker loses consciousness. He only needed to hold on for ten seconds. It doesn't seem that long until you are the one holding on. Then the seconds seem to tick by at a snail's pace. James counts down in his head. He didn't want to hold on too long.

The assailant goes limp after nine seconds. When they go limp James lets go. He didn't want to go to prison for murder. Even though Florida has the Stand Your Ground law. If he feared for his life or the life of another, he could use any means to save himself or someone else. He didn't want to risk it. Renee and Piper needed him there with them.

As James lets go of the assailant, the third attacker had come back into the bedroom. Seeing his associate unconscious on the floor. The third guy pulls the Glock out. In an instant, James had picked up his knife, so it was a knife against a gun. By no means was it a fair fight, James was, however, in the advantage since the attacker had clearly never fired a gun.

The attacker didn't realize that the gun's obvious safety was still on, so when he pulled the trigger, nothing happened. In the moment of distraction, James had closed the distance between the two of them. He lands a solid hit to the man's solar plexus sending him reeling in pain gasping for air. Landing a second hit to the attacker's lungs, James ends the fight before it really began.

James couldn't worry about the attacker. He had to call Horatio, he knew that he needed help with Renee and assistance with the assailants.

"What's wrong, James?" Horatio asks his sister's fiancé before James can say anything about what happened.

"We both need you here now. You know about the assaults in the neighborhood. Well, they just hit our house. Renee's not conscious. H, they were assaulting her when I got home. They knocked me out and tied me up. They made me watch until I got my knife out and cut myself free. I managed to knock two of them out. The third one had already left. I don't know what to do since I don't want to compromise any evidence. Can you just get here? There is nothing the doctors can do if Renee had been dosed with a strong sedative. I pray it was Rohypnol, that way, she wouldn't remember what happened. I know I will never forget, but she needs to be able to forget," James finally finishes telling her brother what happened.

"I'm close, I will be there in less than five minutes," Horatio quickly hangs up. Putting his emergency siren on the roof while he was driving.

Pulling up to his sister's house, Horatio finds the canines still sedated on the garage floor. James heard Horatio pull up and was down in an instant to take Horatio up to the scene of the attack. Walking into the bedroom, Horatio was met with broken photographs and the body of the suspect that James had choked out. Horatio wordlessly handcuffs the unconscious suspect.

"I put the other attacker in the closet," James tells Horatio as he pulls H to the closet.

Getting his zip-cuffs out, Horatio slowly opens up the closet door. Opening the door completely, they find the third attacker lying in the fetal position gasping for air. The attacker offers no resistance to Horatio cuffing him.

With both suspects, cuffed, Horatio and James redirected their attention to Renee. Very quickly and gently, James unties Renee from the bed. Once she was free, James checks her to get her pulse.

James finds that she has a very slow heart rate as well as a slow respiratory rate. She was barely breathing with a very weak and thready pulse.

"H, Nae's pulse and breathing are both weak. We need to get her to the hospital. At least at the hospital, they can put her on a respirator to help her breathe. They can even put her on an EMO machine again. That could keep her alive until her body can metabolize whatever drug she was dosed with," James says as he scoops Renee up in his arms and runs downstairs.

By this time, the third attacker is able to talk. As H and James head to the door, they can hear him say something under his breath.

"I hadn't done anything yet. I'll talk for a deal. You know I've never fired a gun. I couldn't kill anyone or hurt anyone. I was just going to shoot the floor twice. Leaving the two of you alive and well," he says as he motions with his head to James.

"He is telling the truth, H, he didn't know that the obvious safety was still on," James says as he looks at Horatio. H was busy making a radio call.

"This is Lieutenant Horatio Caine. I have a 10 00 Officer down at the northwest end of Pine Avenue. All units respond I have an assault and drugging, she can't wait for an ambulance. I'll take her to the hospital requesting assistance keeping the roads clear," Horatio finishes making the one radio call that no officer ever wants to hear. By now, he himself has made that call at least half a dozen times, all involving his sister.

Horatio and James load Renee in Horatio's Hummer, they take off driving at breakneck speed. Before they left, James slipped into the back seat with Renee. He wanted to be there to keep a close eye on Renee's pulse. With her pulse and breathing as weak as they were, James feared they would lose her before they got to the hospital. Looking out the window James couldn't help but notices something different about how the streets were being kept clear for them. As they go racing to the hospital, James realizes that the streets were being kept clear by semi-trucks. The truckers had heard the radio call and responded to the officer down in mass.

"Alexx, get a trauma team outside, we are bringing in Renee. She's been drugged and assaulted. I also want James to be checked out too. He was assaulted, just not drugged as far as he knows," Horatio hangs up on his long time friend.

When they pull up to the hospital, Alexx was outside with a full trauma team. Horatio leads Alexx around the hummer to the passenger side rear door. Opening it, they find James holding the limp head of Renee in his lap. Sliding out of the Hummer, James lets the doctors work.

"Baby, you need to get checked out too. We want to make sure that you are fine. This is not up for debate, Baby," Alexx tells a distraught James. He didn't want to let Renee out of his sight.

Reluctantly, James allows himself to be separated from Renee.

James undergoes a toxicology screening. What came back was shocking to everyone. He tested positive for extremely high levels of Rohypnol too. He had lethal amounts of it in his system. Alexx could not explain how the drug seemed to have zero effect on James, but it rendered Renee almost lifeless.

Alexx had Renee intubated and connected to a respirator. Essentially Alexx has Renee put on life support again. Renee's heart rate had stabilized, but she was barely breathing. They could only wait and see if she can process the drug.

James stayed in Renee's hospital room, while Horatio goes back to the house. He needed to help process the scene and secure the canines. By now, the dogs should be coming out of their sedation.

Getting back to Renee's house, Horatio has Eric and Calleigh process the scene and gather evidence that they could use as leverage to get the one assailant to flip on his partners. Walking up to Renee's front door, Horatio could see that Calleigh had already secured the three canines. In fact, Charlie and Echo were ready to go to the hospital to be there when his sister woke up.

Walking into the upstairs master bedroom, Horatio could see that both assailants were able to talk. Remembering Renee's friend Gibbs's rule number one, Horatio made sure that their two suspects were not together. Since Gibbs's rule number one was, "Never let two suspects stay together," Horatio had one of them taken back to the precinct, and the other stayed at the scene. Horatio kept the one that he was willing to work with.

There was only one assailant that Horatio was willing to offer a deal to. It was the one that didn't do anything. He was just there. The assailant didn't even know how to use the gun that the leader had given him.

Horatio and his team really wanted to find and nail the leader. The leader and his associate had attacked, drugged, and assaulted Renee. They had also attacked and drugged James. The suspects had attacked and murdered four other women in the area over the last three weeks. Horatio knew that he would be able to break the underling and get him to flip if he offered the man immunity from Renee's assault.

Once the second assailant was taken back to the precinct, Horatio started talking to the third attacker.

"If you give us the leader's name, we will offer you immunity for this case. We just really want to nail the leader. This victim is my little sister, so it's personal to me," is what Horatio offers to the suspect.  
He was very quick to flip.

"I was the getaway driver for the other assaults in the neighborhood. The leader was starting to see me as a liability, so he made me be involved in this one. I didn't want to do it, but he threatened the lives of my wife and newborn son. I'll give you everyone involved if you can protect them. I don't care what happens to me as long as they are safe," is what the still-unnamed suspect says to Horatio.

Running the suspects fingerprints through AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System), Horatio and his team wait for an ID to be spit out. It only takes a few minutes to get a hit on the suspect.

AFIS ID'ed him as Joshua O'Conner. He was a suspected getaway driver for several home invasions. He and his car were seen in the area around the time of the invasions. So far, the evidence backs up the suspect's claims of only being the getaway driver.

With the ID confirmed, Horatio sends Walter and Ryan to take Joshua's wife and child into protective custody. Horatio was busy working on witness protection for the three of them.

Meanwhile, back at the hospital, the doctors had managed to stabilize Renee. Alexx had put Renee on life support to give Renee's body a chance to metabolize the drug without also having to keep Renee alive. This was really the best scenario for Renee to be in. Her blood to oxygen level or PulseOx level was too low to support life. The respirator was the only thing keeping Renee in the land of the living.

Once James managed to get Renee to the hospital, he started to act funny. Looking James in the eyes, Alexx thought that she saw some physical signs of the benzodiazepines that were known to be inside of him. Rohypnol is a very powerful benzo that is not even legal in the US.

Alexx started to notice that James's eyes were both restricted to pinpoints, and they had a glossy look to them. It was not until she saw him try to walk when she started to worry about him. All of James's coordination seemed to be gone. James starts to walk like he was a drunken sailor, with jelly legs. He starts to fall to the ground, but Alexx catches him.

"Whoa, easy there. Be careful. Here sit down, Baby," Alexx tells James as she gently guides him to a chair in Renee's room.

With James sitting down, Alexx runs a few non-invasive tests on him. She wanted to see his mental capacity at the time. She knew he had massive amounts of Rohypnol in his body. James appears to be finally showing signs of the drug's presence in his system.

"Baby, do you know where you are?" Was the first question that she asked her friend.

"Of course, we are at Renee's house. What are you doing here?" was what James tells his friend. He was not at Renee's house but rather the hospital.

"Do you know what today's date is?" Was the next question that Alexx asks her friend.  
Looking Alexx in the eyes, James again gives a wrong answer.

"January 2nd, why are you asking these questions," was James's answer. It was, however, March 9th.

All of James's answers were majorly slurred.

James tries to stand up, but his legs weren't working. Falling down to his knees, James started to get aggressive.

"What did you do to me? My legs aren't working," He accuses Alexx of doing something to him.

By now, he had caused quite a scene. The whole ward knows that the calmest person there was the one trying to talk James down from his agitation. Alexx has talked a lot of people down out of their aggression.

"James, Baby, we are not here to hurt you. I have done nothing to you. You were drugged with a powerful sedative," Alexx is trying to calm James down while an orderly is getting a dose of Zolpidem. They would normally give Valium, but that is a benzodiazepine too. They couldn't give him double of the same type of drug. Zolpidem was classified as a non-benzodiazepine sedative. The drug was a last resort. Alexx wanted to try to talk him out of it. So far, it was not working.  
James had enough and attempted to walk out again. This time he was able to walk, just not a straight line. The orderly slips Alexx, a syringe behind her back.

When James attempts to bum-rush her in his attempt to get away, Alexx is forced to inject the drug in the back of James's neck. He had pinned Alexx between the door and him. As James falls to the floor, Alexx orders a bed. She had James put in a bed that they bring into Renee's room.

Alexx did have the hospital's security guards cuff him to the bed as he sleeps the drugs off. She hoped that his body would metabolize the drug before the Zolpidem wears off. As James sleeps, Renee was lying on life support in a bed to his right.  
James's sedation lasts six hours. Opening his eyes, Alexx is the first person he sees.

Seeing James was awake, Alexx again asks him if he knows where they are.

"I think I'm at the hospital," James answers. He looks at Alexx before he asks her a question.

"Why are you asking me? What happened?"

"You don't remember what happened, Baby," Alexx answers James' question with a question.

"You and Renee were drugged and assaulted," Alexx finally answers James' question.  
Hearing that, James frantically searches the room. His eyes settle on Renee lying there on life support.

"God, what happened to you, Sweetheart," he asks the sleeping form of his fiancé.

A few hours after he wakes up, James was sitting in a chair watching Nae sleep.

Back at the house, Calleigh stays there to get Piper and take her to the hospital. Nine hours after the attack had happened, Piper is dropped off by Maize Monroe's mom.

Walking up to the front door, Piper quickly sees that the door had been kicked in. She runs in to find out what happened.  
"It's Nae, Sweetheart. She was attacked and drugged. Your dad was knocked out. He's fine now. Nae is in the hospital. Your dad wants me to bring you there. He wants us to bring Charlie and Echo too. We all know that Nae will want to see them when she wakes up," Calleigh tells Piper before the teen can even ask what happened.

James didn't want Piper to know that he was drugged, too, so he doesn't have anyone tell her that part. He wanted to be the one to tell Piper what really happened. He wanted his daughter to be able to see her daddy was fine when she is told what happened. James didn't want to scare his daughter.

Walking into the hospital with Calleigh, Piper sees her dad sitting in a chair at Renee's side. Running up to her dad, the teen hugs him tight.

"Daddy, you're okay. Thank God, you are okay. What happened to Nae, dad?" Piper tells her dad as she hugs him.

"I don't know if you know, but we have had a lot of home invasions turned into murder in our neighborhood the past month. I told Nae to put a security camera in. The home invaders hit our house. I got home from dropping you off, only to find all the dogs drugged in the garage."

"Horatio told me that the door had been kicked in, so I ran to find Nae. I found her on her stomach in bed with a needle sticking out of her back. The attackers hit me in the head, knocking me out cold. When I come too, I get my knife out and cut myself free. Once free, I choke one out and hit another right in the solar plexus. He couldn't breathe, so he was no longer a threat. Calling H, we rushed her to the hospital. Once at the hospital, they test me for drugs too since Nae was drugged. My levels were really high. I showed signs of the drug, so they sedate me to sleep it off. In the meantime, Nae was put on life support until her body can metabolize the drug. Now you and I can only wait," James finishes explaining what happened to Nae to his daughter.

Piper took all the information in then asks her dad a simple question.

"But, you are fine, right?" Was the simple question she asked him.

"Sweetheart, I'm fine. It's Nae I'm worried about now." James says as they both look at Nae lying there on life support.

The rhythmic beeping of Renee's heart monitor and the soft whooshing of the respirator that was keeping Renee alive had a sedative effect on Piper. Sitting in a chair in the room, the teenager quickly fell asleep. After a few hours of sleeping, Piper wakes up to find her daddy staring out the window.

Seeing her dad by the window, Piper approaches him to ask him a question.

"What are you thinking about, daddy?"

Turning around to face his daughter, Piper could easily see her daddy had been crying.

"Come here Sweetie, I want to tell you just how much Nae has done for me, you, and your mom. I can't believe that it took me this long to see that Nae has been showing her undying love for us since boot camp."

Sitting back down in his chair, he pulls his daughter's seat closer to him so he wouldn't have to talk so loud. He then tells her all about Nae from boot camp till now.

"I first met Nae on the first day of Marine boot camp, and I instantly liked her. She was eighteen, and I was nineteen years old. The first thing I noticed was her infectious smile. She doesn't smile that way too often, but when she does, she can light up a room. She scared all the other cadets to death, but strong women have never scared me. Even from the beginning, she showed her willingness to give her life to save others. I remember one time during our early morning exercises, someone yelled grenade and threw a grenade in the middle of the group. Everyone scattered, but Renee. She jumped on the grenade and put herself between us and the explosive, all one hundred ten pounds of her. Her willingness to pay the ultimate sacrifice so early on was very impressive to our drill sergeant. The grenade was a dummy, but we didn't know that. During our obstacle course, she helped everyone else up the wall before she went herself. She understood that we work better as a unit then alone. The entire time you are in boot camp, the drill sergeant's tear the individual down and build the unit up. She arrived at boot camp with the knowledge that the safety of the unit as a whole is far more important than any, one individual life."

"Renee could run faster than any other cadet. We were all carrying fifty pound backpack every run we did. That means we ran ten miles with fifty pounds on our back every day. Renee would take off and be back to base long before anyone else. We are supposed to stay as a unit, but Renee's willingness to sacrifice her life for the unit gave her some special privileges. One day she looked back and saw a female cadet fall down. Renee doubled-back and helped the female up. She then threw the other female's backpack on top of hers. The drill sergeant told her not to do it, but Nae said that she could do it. Our drill sergeant must have been curious if Renee could do it because he allowed it. Renee then ran the rest of the run side by side with the female cadet."

"After that, the drill sergeant would give Renee a heavier and heavier backpack. He wanted to see just how much this little fierce red-haired firecracker could do. By now, Renee had impressed the recruits and all the staff alike. Renee would carry the now one hundred pound backpack and still be back to base before anyone else. She never told anyone how she did it."

"During the week when we learn how to shoot, again, Renee impressed everyone. We have forty targets to shoot, but we only need to hit half of them to pass. Renee hit every one of them. Our instructor moved ten of the targets double the distance and had Renee try again. With every shot hitting dead center, they again moved them. By now, the targets were two miles away. Renee still had perfect scores. At this time, his boss told him to move on."

"We all make it through boot camp, largely in part to Renee encouraging everyone to not give up. Her mom was there and gave Nae her Sig, she still has that gun. It is still her primary sidearm. After graduation, we are both sent to New Orleans."

"This is where Renee introduces me to your mom Mac. Apparently, Renee was surfing down there and did a fancy stunt. Later someone came up complimenting your mom on it. Your mom had no idea what he was talking about. A few days later, Mac sees Renee from the back. Going up to her, she tells Renee about the compliment earlier. From the back, they looked almost identical. Your mom was a little taller. Mac had dark green eyes, and Nae has those ice-blue eyes. Otherwise, they look the same. Mac and I hit it off right away. When we got married, Renee was your mom's maid of honor. I had asked her to be my best man, but she said that she will be Mac's maid of honor."

"During Renee and I's first deployment, our convoy was attacked. There were a lot of injured soldiers, including me. Renee and her canine Atlas were not hurt. The only other person that was not hurt was the unit's medic. Atlas pulled all the injured to safety about a hundred yards away. He pulled us all to a rocky outcropping. While Atlas cleared the area, Renee had pulled the gunner's hummer around and was giving Atlas cover to save us all."

"With Renee being one of the only uninjured soldiers there, she called in an airstrike to her location. She was right in front of the insurgents. She got hit with a lot of shrapnel, but she killed all the insurgents. Again she showed her willingness to die to save others. For that, she was awarded a Silver Star, an Army and Marine Corps Medal, a Distinguished Service Medal, and a Purple Heart. Over time she did that type of action four more times. Twice on our third tour of duty, which was after your mom had died. Every time she was awarded a Medal, I was one of the possible casualties. I didn't realize that she wasn't willing to give her life for just anyone, She was willing to give her life to save me," James finishes telling Piper what Renee had done for him during the last twenty-one years.

When Piper hears that, she looks at Nae with even more love than before.

"Nae is the only reason you're here. She is the only reason I'm here," Piper tells her dad as she turns to look at him.

"Yes, Sweetie. I should have died when I was twenty when our convoy was attacked. I had just met your mom. I married your mom right when we got back," James says as he looks lovingly at Renee as she slept.

With James in the room, Alexx would come in and run tests to see if Renee had stabilized enough to take her off of life support. Six hours after Piper had gotten to the hospital, Alexx has Renee removed from life support since her PulseOx level was holding steady at ninety-eight percent. She was at a normal PulseOx level but was still intubated. Alexx wanted her to be intubated to make it easier to put her back on life support if Renee's vitals crashed.

By now, it was thirteen hours since she had been drugged, most people can metabolize the drug within twelve hours. Renee, however, was still not conscious. Horatio had finally gotten back to the hospital. Having closed the case with the help of the one assailant who flipped. The one that James had hit in his solar plexus. This person gave Horatio the leader and all his accomplices. There were more people involved than Horatio had thought. With the informant's help, they solved four additional invasions and murders, as well as ten armed robberies, and eight carjackings.

With Renee still not conscious and the hospital's two-person rule being enforced, Horatio could only stand in the hall watching through a tiny window. He really wanted to be in the room. The shift manager for this particular shift was a stickler for the rules and would not bend them even for a police officer. The manager did, however, allow both police dogs to stay despite it being against the rules of the hospital. Unable to stand outside doing nothing, Horatio took his team to arrest the leader of the assaults.

James and Piper had both fallen asleep in Renee's hospital room. They were unaware that anything had changed in the room. Only when James felt a dog jump on the bed did he open his eyes. Pulling Charlie back, he looks at Renee closely.  
He could see her eyelids flutter. She was trying to wake up.

"Come on, Baby wake up. Sweetheart, you can do it," James was encouraging his fiancé to wake up. Hearing her daddy talk, Piper wakes up and runs to be next to him.

Renee's eyes open suddenly. She was in a total and complete panic.

"Go get the doctor, Sweetie," James tells his daughter as he tries to calm Renee down. He didn't want Renee to try to remove the intubation herself. She could really hurt herself doing that.

Piper appears with a doctor. The doctor rushes over to Renee's bedside.

"Nod your head if you can understand me, Sweetie," the doctor asks a clearly scared Renee.

Unable to say anything, Renee nods "yes," still in a panic.

Recognizing the panic in his fiancé's eyes, James tries to calm her down. She needs to relax as much as possible before they remove the intubation.

"Baby, it's okay. You're safe here. Please, Sweetheart, they need you to relax a little so they can take the tube out. Just do what they say. Everything will be okay, Sweetie," is what he tells her as he holds her head to make sure she was looking at him. Her eyes had been darting all over the room in her panic.

"Sweetie, I need you to help me a little. When you are ready, I need you to squeeze his hand. The nurse says as she motions to James, who had been holding Renee's hand the whole time. I'm going to need you to cough as hard as possible. If you understand, I need you to nod," is what the nurse tells a visibly calmer Renee.

When Renee nods yes, they all waited for Renee to squeeze James's hand.

The second James nods to the nurse, Renee coughs harder than James had ever heard. Within seconds the intubation had been removed. With the intubation pulled out, Renee says a single word.

"Water"

James looks at the nurse, who asks Renee an additional question.

"Can you swallow, Sweetheart?"

Renee proceeds to show both James and the nurse that she can swallow. Seeing that the nurse hands James a cup of water with a straw. James quickly helps Renee drink some water.

"Are you okay? Can you talk? Do you know what happened to you?" James asks his fiancé.  
Renee nods yes, then starts to talk about what she remembers.

"I remember being at home when I heard a loud noise. Before I can find out what it was, I feel something hit the back of my neck. Everything goes black. The next thing I know, I wake up here. What happened to me?"

Seeing the worry in James's eyes, Renee knows what happened without him saying anything. She just knew that she had been assaulted. James was attacked too, and he also cannot remember what happened to him. Due to his size, it took his body a lot longer for the drug to affect him. Before the full effects of the drug had hit James, he had given his testimony to Horatio, who had recorded it for safety.

Not that they needed the victim's testimonies, they had a snitch who flipped on the leader. James's testimony couldn't hurt. When Renee had first come in the hospital, they performed a SART exam when James gave them permission.

The SART nurse had found potential DNA samples that they had rushed to Horatio's lab. Getting the samples to the lab, Natalia ran the analysis to find out what type of evidence. Due to where Renee was found and what she was wearing/ not wearing, Natalia had a feeling it was biological in nature.

When the DNA is processed, the results were not surprising. They had managed to pull sperm from two individuals. Horatio and his team just needed to get a sample from the suspected leader and his followers. The leader had managed to remain uncaught until he attacked the sister of Horatio Caine. Horatio would never let this case go until it is closed.

With the informant talking and the DNA evidence, Horatio knew that his team would solve it. The other victims were made to wash before they were shot point-blank in the back of the head execution-style. Renee had been found and taken to the hospital immediately, where they ran the SART exam right away. Doing that, the SART team was able to pull viable evidence off of her. That was one of her attacker's biggest mistake.

That and taking James out too. He's a mountain of a man. Tall, strong, and built like a powerhouse. It took his body a long time to succumb to the drug. Long enough of a time for him to call for help and get Renee to the hospital. Once at the hospital, he finally was taken out by the Rohypnol in his system. He still forgot everything that happened to both him and Renee.

When Eric ran the DNA through CODIS (Combined DNA Index System), they got the results that they were expecting.

Horatio had a feeling who would come back as the suspect, but he wanted his team to build a rock-solid case so the suspects would not get off on a technicality.

Bruce Walters came back as a contributor to the sample. When Joshua identified Bruce as the leader. If you add the DNA evidence found inside Renee, and his fingerprints found on the syringe that tested positive for both Rohypnol inside and Renee's blood on the needle along with James's blood. Some foreign hairs were found on Renee that also points to Bruce.

His team had enough rock-solid evidence that pointed to Bruce to bury him. They had already run the DNA from the second attacker through CODIS. He was already in custody. The team turned their focus on the leader. The second attacker was ID'ed as Jim Wilson.

Horatio had left the hospital with Frank Tripp (his team's homicide detective), and Eric Delko to arrest Bruce. As the team approaches Bruce, Horatio really wanted a reason to kill him. This monster had assaulted and murdered four other women, assaulted his sister and her fiancé, nearly killing them too.

Horatio finally got the chance to arrest Bruce, putting the cuffs on him gave Horatio a sense of closure. He wanted to get back to the hospital to tell James. Horatio had left before his sister had woken up from her drugging and assault.

Back at the hospital, Renee didn't want James to call her brother.

"Do you want me to call your brother and tell him you woke up?'was the question that James asked his fiancé.

"No, I want him to see for himself? Just call and find out when he will be coming by." Renee tells James.

James then calls Horatio to ask him to take Echo home. That was the only thing he could think of that wouldn't give away that Renee had woken up.

Renee and Piper had been cuddling together since Renee woke up. Piper had a new deep love for Renee after she learned everything that Renee had done for her family.

Between when James walked out into the hall to call Horatio and when he walked back in, Renee had fallen asleep. Coming into Renee's hospital room, James sees Renee sleeping with his daughter, snuggled up to her.

"Sweetie, Nae's sleeping. Let me pick you up so you don't wake her up?" James whispers to his daughter.  
Piper didn't say anything, she just nodded her head, "yes."

James quietly picks up Piper and takes her to a chair. His daughter didn't want to let go of her dad's neck, so James sits down with his daughter curled up in his lap.

Horatio had told him he would be there in two hours to pick up Echo. With that information, James had walked back into Renee's room.

The next two hours pass quickly with Renee, and now Piper both quietly sleeping. James's mind starts to wander while he watches the two most important people in his life sleeping. Thinking about things only known to him, James is startled by a quiet knock on the door frame.

Looking up to see Horatio standing there, James signals to Horatio to be quiet, Piper was sleeping. Without a word, James motions to Horatio to talk to his sister.

"Go say something to her. I know she can hear you," James whispers to Horatio, so he didn't wake Piper still sleeping in his lap.

Horatio was not sure he believed James, but he decided to humor his soon to be brother-in-law.

Walking up to his sister's bed, Horatio didn't know what to say.

"Baby, I don't know if you can hear me, but please wake up. Don't die from a damn drug overdose. We got the men who did this. You solved a dozen other unsolved cases. Sweetie, you are the only family I have left," Horatio tells his the sleeping form of his sister.

He then holds her hand to kiss it. When she squeezes it back, she startles him. Jumping back. He looks at Renee's face. As she opens her eyes, Horatio looks at James in disbelief.

As he looks at James, he got a non-startled reaction.

"Did you know she was awake? Why didn't you tell me she woke up?" Is what he asks James.  
James just tells him a three-word answer.

"Nae told me," was how James answers Horatio's question. James goes on to say other things.

"She wanted you to see for yourself when you got here. That's why I really asked you to come."

With Renee awake, Horatio takes his sister's dogs back to his house until they release his sister. Horatio also took Piper The teen had taken one day off when Renee was hospitalized. Her AP Physics final was the next day, so she needed to go to school.

The hospital wanted to keep Renee for a few days to keep an eye on her and make sure there are no complications from the drugs in Renee's system.


	4. Chapter: Confession of Hearts

Alone with Renee, finally, James can talk more openly with his fiancé.

"I am so sorry that I couldn't protect you. I failed you like I failed Mac. It's my job to protect you, but I couldn't. Baby, forgive me," He begs Nae for forgiveness since he blamed himself for both of the recent attacks.

Seeing the pain in James's eyes, Renee immediately forgives him.

"Of course, I forgive you. You can't protect me from everything. I held on so long in the last attack for a more important reason then just you. I overheard my attackers saying that once I die, they were going after Piper. That was not going to happen if I had anything to say about it. I wouldn't have been able to hold on much longer. I was so weak. I just needed to buy Horatio time to find me. I knew he would never give up until I was safe. I know you would have stopped my attacks if you could. From what I heard while I was in my coma, you stopped it from getting worse and took two suspects out in the process. You saved me by getting me to the hospital. I overheard Alexx talking to a nurse while I was sleeping that you had enough drug in your system to kill a horse."

She looked up to see James' baby blue eyes filled with tears. Carefully Renee scoots over on her bed before she pats the mattress.

"Come on, lie down. There's more than enough room for you. I would love to rest my head on your chest. I know it brings us both comfort," Renee says before James has a chance to break down in tears.

Without a word, James lays down on his fiancé's bed with her. Settling down on the bed, Renee lays her head down on James' chest.

"I think that I will put that Simply Safe security system in when we get home," Renee tells James, who is still holding back tears.

Looking down at Renee, James finds her looking up at him. Seizing the moment, James sees an opportunity. Leaning down, he kisses his fiancé on the lips for the first time. Over the last two years, he has kissed her forehead and cheek but never the lips. He was wanting to give Renee time to get used to having Piper and him in his life. Even when he proposed, he only kissed her lips as a peck, but this time was different. This time their lips locked for a while.

When James's lips touch, Renee's everything stopped. They were the only ones there. All her fears and insecurities disappeared. Renee didn't want the kiss to end, but it does after what to Renee seemed to be forever. Sitting back up, James has something that he wanted to tell her.

"Sweetheart, watching you sleep in your last coma, I had a lot of time to think. I realized something that I can't believe it took me so long to realize. How could I have been so blind? Ever since boot camp, I thought that you were willing to give your life for all the other cadets. The whole time you have been trying to show me that it was not just anyone you would give your life for but rather me. I realized that every time that you earned a Medal for courage, I would have been among the casualties if you didn't do what you did. From the dummy grenade, to the IED, to the ambush, then the suicide bomber at the barracks, to the carjacking, you risked everything to save me with no guarantee for your own life. I owe you more than I can ever repay."

"That being said, you have got to stop putting my life above your own. I really can't live without life is just as important as mine is. You are a Marine to the bones, but do you remember what our drill sergeant taught us. You are a team. The safety of the team as a whole is greater than your own safety. Like it or not, you and I are a team, a team of two," is what James tells a still stunned Renee.

It takes a while for Renee to be able to say anything, she just lays on the bed with a slightly shocked look on her face.

"Nae, Sweetie, are you okay?" James asks Renee when she doesn't respond to what he says.

Coming back to reality, Renee finally responds tp what James had told her.

"Sorry, Babe, I guess I'm so used to working in a unit, being a team of two will take some getting used to. I was just thinking about the kiss. I've wanted that for quite a while. I just didn't know how to go about it. I fell for you in boot camp but didn't think you liked me that way. I didn't want to ruin our friendship, so I kept quiet. I liked kissing you," Renee finally confesses to James that she has loved him since boot camp.

"Baby, I fell for you from that first smile on our first day at boot camp. I was convinced that you didn't like me that way. Why would someone as beautiful and talented as you like me? I wouldn't have made it through boot camp without your encouragement not to give up. When you introduced me to Mac, it just convinced me that you didn't like me that way. Why would you set me up if you loved me," James finally tells Renee how long he's loved her.

Smiling her infectious smile, Renee answers James's last question.

"I loved you so much but was convinced that you didn't. I still wanted to make sure that you would be taken care of, so I introduced you to Mac, I knew that you two would hit it off and I was right," Renee again smiles at James.

James doesn't say anything. He just smiles back right before he leans down for another kiss. This time the kiss didn't end for a long time. Locking lips for several minutes, the two blinded by love Marines just let go for a little while.

The hospital keeps Renee for only a few days. They were tired of finding her trying to escape the hospital. Getting back home, Piper tells Renee something that surprised Renee.

"I know you kissed daddy. I haven't seen him this happy in forever. I know you both loved my mom very much, so please don't think for a minute that I think you want to replace mom. I know you don't want to replace her. She loved you, and I love you. Whatever you are doing with daddy, please keep doing it. He's happy for the first time in forever," Piper finishes before she goes skipping down the hall.

Renee hears Piper running up the stairs to her room. Renee knew that the teen wouldn't be back down until dinner. She'll tell James what Piper said when he gets home, which should be any minute.

Hearing the front door opening, Renee goes to greet James. Pulling him into the pantry, Renee wants to tell him what Piper had just told her.

"Piper just gave me permission to kiss you in front of her. She knows we kissed because you are just so happy. She wants me to keep doing whatever I'm doing since you are the happiest she has ever seen you. We can't sneak anything past her," Renee finished explaining to James about the conversation she just had with his daughter.

"I keep forgetting that she can read people better than any interrogator," James says as he smiles. Quickly he leans in for a kiss. This time it was quite passionately. James really loved kissing Renee. He had forgotten the feeling since he hasn't done it since he kissed Mac as he left for his third tour of duty. He never saw his wife alive again. He was smiling to himself as he had a thought cross his mind.

Thinking to himself that kissing Renee lit a fire in him that he thought was dead forever. It just felt right, he had never admitted it to anyone, but Renee has been his best friend for twenty years. He was still overseas when Renee transferred to the Border Patrol. Renee needed to be on the front line, not stuck at some base. It killed him not to see her again, but he understood her need to be useful. He just loved being in the same room as Renee.

The first morning that Renee and James were back from the hospital dawned beautifully. Renee wanted to show James the secret entrance to her hidden wo-man cave. She knew that he could hold his breath long enough. She just needed to wait for Piper to leave for Maxx's house. Piper and her friends had planned on crashing a paintball war at Lukas's dad's Paintball course.

Getting downstairs very quietly, Renee starts to make everyone her famous Cinnamon Swirl French Toast that she knows Piper and James love. By the time she gets six slices of French Toast done, she hears Piper bump into the wall as she sleepily walks into the kitchen. Not long after Piper walks in, so does James.

She brought the platter of food over to the breakfast nook in the kitchen. Renee places the full platter down for Piper and her dad to take what they wanted while Renee made herself some also. She knew that Piper could out eat her dad any day, especially on French Toast mornings.

By the time Renee got back to the nook, Piper had already eaten all the French Toast leaving her dad still hungry. Seeing the look on James' face, Renee places an additional plate full of five slices onto the table, Renee knew that she could only eat two, but she also knew James would gladly eat whatever was left from either her plate or Piper's plate.

"I'm going to Maxx's for the day. Lukas and all the other kids are meeting us at the course. Daddy, did you jack up the pressure of my Project Salvo so I can get more distance?" Piper asks while she gets up and cleans her plate.

"Yes, I put it next to your suit. Don't forget your go-pro. I want to see your sniper hits, Baby," James shouts to Piper's back as she runs out of the house.

"Well, she'll be gone until Tobias kicks her out at about seven tonight. That girl sure loves crashing other people's paintball wars. Did you know that Tobias gave her a code name so the players will not know Piper's out there? They started a betting pool to who will be the last ones standing. Who will be the ones that Piper snipes? Tobias and the other workers will say something like, "is the package in today? Or "will the package be here today." The other players don't seem to mind either," James tells Renee what goes on at McGraws Paintball and Gun Range.

Walking up behind James, Renee whispers in his ear what she wants to do.

"Sweetie, I want to show you my little hidden grotto. You have to dive to get to it. There is a hidden tunnel the connects both pools together. In the middle of that tunnel is a secret hatch that leads down a short tunnel that opens up to a cave. You can hold your breath for five minutes, and it only takes two minutes to swim to the cave," as she kisses his neck.  
James smiles up at Renee. "Sounds like a plan. Let me go get my trunks on. I assume your swimsuit is on under your robe," James says as he stands up to go upstairs. Getting back to the kitchen, he finds it empty.

Standing at the kitchen door, he hears a loud splash coming from the pool area. Getting to the side glass door, he sees Renee standing on her high dive diving board. She had been diving since he went upstairs. Being her high school's star diver, Renee would always do perfect dives.

He walks outside right when Renee dives back in, doing a perfect triple tuck pike dive. Getting to the edge, James jumps in. They quickly get to each other's side. Renee motions for him to follow her, so naturally, he does. Since he has no idea what's going on, Renee swims fast to where the waterfall was landing.

"Here, put your ear underwater. Tell me when you hear clanking. I need to twist this pool light to the left five times," she says as she swims to a pool light right behind the waterfall.

James does what he was told, putting his ear underwater he listens for a clanking. He had no idea what it was. After about a minute, he hears clear clanking. It sounded like a metal grate being moved.

"Nae, I hear it. Now what?" He shouts to Renee.

Without a word, Renee swims up to James and motions for him to follow her closely. The two then swim near the bottom. Off to the side, James sees a dark square that is not supposed to be there. Renee was swimming to the square and disappeared inside. Quickly he goes right behind Renee into the tunnel. Getting through, James sees her about fifty yards away. She was leading him to the hidden hatch. If James didn't know it was there, he would have never seen it. He could see Renee pushing a panel in, and the panel gave way to another tunnel. Sliding through this second tunnel, it very quickly opens up to a huge cavern.

"This so looks like a James Bond villain's hideout," James said out loud.

Renee must have heard him since she responds, "that was what I was going for, Baby," Renee says as she swims up to a ladder to get out of the water. Following Renee, James climbs out too. Getting out of the water, Renee quickly grabs a robe hanging on a hook near the ladder.

James thought, is it just me, or did she cover up her swimsuit faster than before. Thinking about that, he follows Renee as she shows him around her grotto. She leads him to the pool table, the TV, and over to the hot tub. James then noticed Renee walking down the stairs into the hot tub still in her robe. By now, he knew something was up. He quickly joined Renee. He needed to ask her what was going on.

"Sweetie, what's going on? It's almost like you don't want me to see your body. What's wrong, Baby?" James finally asks her what is going on.

"I don't. Mac had a perfect scarless body, I saw myself this morning, and I am covered in huge ugly scars from head to toe. I wouldn't want me, why do you?" James could see the pain in Renee's face.

Closing the distance in a second, James takes her hand and pulls her close.

"Sweetheart, I think your scars make you the most beautiful person on earth. I know them better than you think," he quietly guides her out of the hot tub. Without a further word, James pulls her to the swing bed close to the hot tub and sits down. Pulling her close, James starts kissing every scar on her and telling her where they were from. A lot of the scars are from before she even met him. Somehow he knew where they came from. James even identified ones from her childhood.

While she was standing, James gently takes off her robe. He knew that she was wearing a bikini since that was all she had. He kissed the scar from where the doctors cracked her chest open all the times that her lung had collapsed. James kissed her bullet scars from the AK-47 in Afghanistan. Going down, he kisses her shrapnel scars and the stab wounds scars and her gunshot scar from the carjacking. He kisses her scars from when they put plates and pins in her forearms from her beating three years before. James kissed the scars from when she broke her arm in the fourth grade. Very gently, he lays her down on the bed. With Renee now on the bed, he goes around to her back. He kisses all over her back. He knew she had no feeling on her back from the torture by the Taliban, but he kissed it anyway. He then shocked her when he even identified her scars from a shark bite that she knows for a fact she never told him about.

When she was in high school, she went with her swim and diving teams to Nationals in Hawaii. One day before Nationals, she had been asked to see a University of Hawaii talent scout at the beach. At the beach, she had told the scout that she surfed too. Impressed with that, the scout gave her a surfboard and wanted to see. She surfed beautifully. When she came out, there was a note from the scout that said that they liked what they saw, and they would get back to her. She goes back out and surfs some more. About an hour later, someone saw her lying on her surfboard, heavily bleeding from a shark attack. She never screamed or panicked, so no one knew she was in trouble. Since she didn't panic, her injuries were kept to a minimum. With minimum injuries, her scars were kept to a minimum. She never talked about that day to anyone, not even her mom.

Laying on her swing bed twenty-two years later, James is telling her how she got the scars and damn it he was right. The bite was across her upper thigh on the back. The shark bit her while she was paddling out, and it got both her and the surfboard. The scars were only on the back. Renee didn't care how he knew. She was touched that he knew. Rolling over to face James, she pulls him close and kisses him.

The two Marines sit for a while and talk on the swinging bed. After a while, Renee stands back up and walks over to the hot tub, leaving her robe on the floor. Renee trusts James that he thinks her scars make her beautiful. She can't explain why she does, Renee just does. Watching Renee walk away, James quickly joins her for a while. Sitting on the bed, James could feel that Renee had an air conditioner for the cave. Thinking to himself, Nae must have one of the solar panels topside just for her bat-cave.

Sitting in the hot tub, Renee hears an alert on her security system she set up. She does have security cameras, but they are not connected externally. It's a closed system. With two displays, one in her bedroom and one down in the cave.  
Getting out of the hot tub, Renee needed to see what was causing the alarms to go off. Getting to the display, Renee and James couldn't believe what they were seeing.


	5. Chapter: Mystery Revealed

Chapter: A Mystery Revealed

Not long after the cave encounter, they were down in Renee's indoor shooting range and playing with her revolver collection. They had been shooting the pistols to keep them all in good working order. Knowing it was Renee's least favorite gun, James fired the 500. With Renee's back to him, James spins the cylinder and pulls back the hammer of her 500 Magnum Smith and Wesson, and this causes Renee to flinch big time. He clearly saw her jump out of her skin as she spun around to face him. He could only see horror in her eyes.

She was back in the boy's wrestling locker room during her high school reunion. She was reliving the trauma of the assault that she had blocked out of her memory.  
James tries to help her in the way that always worked before. He tries to get as small and as non-threatening as he can. He tries to get close enough to hold her tight. James tries desperately to soothe her.

"Nae… Baby… It's me, James… I got you, Sweetie… You're safe," James says soothingly.

Nae responds by violently pushing herself free of him.

"No, Get away from me… No, Don't touch me… Stop, get off of me," she screamed.

Renee throws a box of .22 ammo at James. She was not aiming just throwing, so the box misses him. Again she screams.

"No, Get away from me… Leave me alone… Don't touch me…," she screams as she throws a couple of pistols and a gun cleaning kit.

Renee grabs for something when James realizes what it was he ducks. He gets out of the way right as a throwing knife hits the wall. The blade was deeply embedded in the wall.

Standing back, James realizes that this is a completely different monster. Nae was not cowering in the corner, shaking like she was previously; she was rather making herself bigger.

He had never seen this behavior before. She was screaming and throwing things at him. She hurled anything that was not bolted down. She lobbed guns, bullets, cleaning tools, even throwing knives. At first, he didn't understand what she was saying since she was just so hysterical.

"Get away from me… No, don't touch me…," immediately followed by a 1 80 in tone.

"Please, I beg you… Don't hurt me again… I'll do anything, just please don't kill me," she screamed. This repeated several times.

More than once, she would go back and forth from offensive to defensive and back to offensive in the same sentence.

"Please, Don't hurt me… No, Don't touch me… No, I beg you…" she screamed at the top of her lungs.

James was terrified since she was surrounded by weapons. He backed away a bit since he didn't want to push her to a point where she pulled a gun on him. James knew he needed help with Renee, and he couldn't help her alone. James just had to reach Renee and bring her back to reality. He didn't want to put Charlie in danger with how hysterical Renee was behaving. James didn't think that she would even recognize her dog.

Before he backed off, he grabbed a flack vest that Renee always stored on the floor near the door. He didn't think that she would shoot him, but he was rightfully scared.

James calls for back up from the only person who came to his mind. He calls his fiancé's brother.

"James, What happened? Where are you?" Horatio asks James before he can say anything.

"H, I honestly have no idea what happened. We were down in the gun room, cleaning the guns. She snapped and is just screaming. What she says makes no sense. She goes from a defensive tone to an offensive tone and back to defensive. I'm scared, H, I don't want to push her to the point where she shoots at me. Just get here," James then hangs up on Horatio.

Horatio rushes over to his sister's house. What James was saying didn't make any sense. Renee is not a violent or aggressive person. Don't get him wrong; his sister will stand her ground and not back down. She is not one who starts fights. She will end them, just not start them. Quickly he runs inside to find James in the den pacing back and forth.

"James, What's going on?" her brother asks James.

"I backed off, All I know is she is not here. She is somewhere else completely. Who's down in the range is not the Nae I recognize. I know everything that she went through, except what happened to her during her attack at the reunion. Whatever happened to her during that time was really bad. I don't know what to do." James finishes telling her brother what was going on.

"Let's see what's going on," Horatio says to James as he walks down the hidden staircase behind the bookshelf.

Getting to the bottom of the stairs, they are nearly shot as a bullet goes flying by missing them by inches. From where they are, they could hear Renee screaming.

"Stay away from me… I won't let you get near me… Immediately followed by "No, please, I beg you… Don't hurt me again. I'll do anything…"

Renee had barricaded herself between the two doors on the range side. If one of them could distract her, the other one could slip behind her and grab her. The only problem was who would distract and who would grab her. Since James was wearing a vest, he volunteered to distract.

James knew that it wasn't Renee who was shooting at him; it was rather a terrified woman. He needed her to focus on him, so he stood up and yelled her name.  
Renee ends up shooting James with a .22 Beretta Bobcat. She was obviously not thinking since that caliber is the weakest one that she had. When the bullets hit James, he didn't even feel them hitting his vest.

Renee was out of ammo but kept shooting. By this time, Horatio was right behind her. In a split second, Horatio had his sister in a tight bear hug. Lifting Renee off the ground, Horatio limited the damage that Renee could inflict on either him or James.

"No… Let me go… No, stop it, put me down… Let me go," Renee repeatedly screamed at the top of her lungs with a blood-curdling scream. Horatio just held on to his baby sister.

By this time, James had gotten to Horatio's side. They needed to figure out what to do now. Renee was still fighting whoever had attacked her in a vivid hallucination. She was obviously still completely terrified and fighting for her life. They don't have time to decide what to do since Nae goes limp in Horatio's arms. By this time, Horatio knows that if his sister goes limp in his arms, that means that she was no longer conscious.

Horatio motions to James to see if his sister was conscious or not. Getting around to his fiancé's face, he shakes his head no. She literally lost consciousness from fear. Her heart rate skyrocketed, and her blood pressure crashed so fast that it led her brain to get deprived of oxygen. The lack of oxygen led her to lose consciousness. They both knew that they needed to get her to the hospital before she woke up since they didn't know if she would wake up still in her hallucination or not.

James was carrying Renee, while Horatio opened the doors. The two men ran up the stairs and out to Horatio's hummer. James slipped into the back seat. He didn't want to leave Renee alone. James was very scared for Renee. He had never seen her behave like this in the twenty-plus years that he's known her. He had already secured the canines in the kitchen, so they didn't need to worry about them. Her friends who were doing security had left to get supplies to build the guard's house, so her security gate was open. This was absolutely the best thing for Renee. Horatio hauled ass through where the gate would have been. Horatio had to call Alexx. He needed her to have an area secured for Renee to go into. Renee needed to be put into protective custody and to restrain her to the bed. He wanted to be prepared for the worst-case scenario.

"Alexx, I need you to get an area secured. Nae had a severe violent PTSD episode and lost consciousness from sheer fear. We need restraints to be on the safe side. Please, we don't know if when she wakes up, she'll be still in her hallucination or would she be back to normal," Horatio hangs up on his friend. He then calls his team for help in getting Renee's house back to normal and to bring the gun that started the whole thing.

"Eric, get the team and clean up Nae's hidden staircase. She had a PTSD episode, and I want her house to look like it never even happened," Horatio then turns around to ask James what gun was the one he had just cleaned.

"Oh, it was Nae's 500 Magnum Smith and Wesson," Horatio then relays that information to Eric.

"Bring the 500 Magnum Smith and Wesson to the hospital. We need to see if it was just this firearm and why she snapped," Horatio then hangs up on his team. He finished the phone call right as he pulls into the hospital emergency bay.

Alexx was outside to take them to the secured area. Alexx managed to secure a bed with the restraints that he had asked for.

After a few hours unconscious, Renee opens her eyes. She had no idea what happened or where she was.

"What happened? Where am I?" Renee asked the room. James had positioned Renee, so she was in a semi-seated position. She looked down at that moment seeing the restraints on her wrists and ankles. Renee looked up to lock eyes with James. At that moment, she noticed that James was wearing a flack vest. She could clearly see where five small-caliber bullets had hit the vest.

With shock and horror in her eyes, she looked back down at her wrists and managed to put two and two together.

"No, Please tell me I didn't shoot you. James, please tell me I didn't do what I think I did," she desperately pleas with James.

James was not able to tell her what she wanted to hear. Renee noticed the hesitation in James and looked to her brother. Locking eyes with her brother, Renee only sees pity in his blue eyes.

James tries to reassure his fiancé that it was okay. By this time, Renee was in tears.

At this time, Alexx walks into the room to see Renee awake in her bed.

"Baby, you woke up. Do you want me to remove those restraints on you?" Alexx asks her friend and patient.

Renee doesn't say anything, so James says it for her.

"Yes, please take the restraints off. She's okay. Nae's back with us" is what James says to Alexx.

Alexx removes the restraints and walks out the door.

"Are you sure you should have done that. You think I'm safe to be near," Renee pleas as she looks up to lock eyes with James.

Smiling softly to Renee, he responds to what she had just said.

"Yes, you are safe to be near. It was very scary to see you like that, but you are safe," he says in a calming manner.

"Baby... it's okay. You weren't yourself. You were back at your high school reunion in the locker room. You were protecting yourself from your attackers. I'm not going anywhere, Sweetie. You're stuck with me. I'm not leaving. There is nothing you can do that would get me to leave you, Sweetheart," James says soothingly. He then reaches out to Renee to caress her cheek.

"No, Don't touch me. Get away. You're not safe with me. I could have killed you," she says as she deflected his hand.

"Baby, I'm fine. It's okay. We need to help you remember. If you can remember what happened, we can protect you. If we don't know what caused this episode we can't protect you," James is trying to get Renee to open up and remember the events of that assault back in Beaumont, Texas.

"I don't know how to remember what happened. My mind buried it deep, so how do I access it," Renee begs for help to rememberer.

"There is always hypnotherapy, that can help you access that part of your brain," James says in a suggestive tone.

"Don't worry, Baby. I will be with you the entire time," James continues when he sees the fear in Renee's eyes.

"Do you want to try that? I can go find someone. There has to be someone who is trained at the hospital," Horatio pipes in since he knew that Renee didn't want James to leave her.

Wordlessly Renee nods yes to her brother's offer.

Horatio quietly leaves the room to find someone who was trained in hypnotherapy. By the time he gets back into the room with a doctor in toe, James was lying in bed with Renee holding her tight as she slept.

"Can you do it while she is asleep, or should I wake her up?" James whispers to the doctor.

"We can, but it will not be as effective as it would be if she were awake," the doctor answered James's question. James gently wakes Renee up.

"Nae… Sweetheart… wake up, Baby. The doctor is here to talk to you, Sweetie," James says as he tenderly wakes Renee up.

Slowly, Renee opens her eyes. Can James stay in here? I want him to be here," Renee asks the doctor.

"That's fine, whoever you want to stay can stay," Renee's doctor tells an apprehensive Renee.

Through hypnotherapy, Renee reveals a horror story of what they did to her.

I'm standing in the bathroom, washing my hands. I look up, and I am surrounded by six men. One grabs me and throws me into the glass mirror. I must have passed out. I open my eyes. It hurt so much to breathe. When I wake up, they make me take off my dress at gunpoint. They tie my hands and feet together. My hands are tied, and my feet are tied. With a gun to the back of my head, they force me to take ecstasy. I plead with them to stop. They then start to punch me in the face and kick me in the ribs. They also cut my back deep six times. I again begged them to stop. One even cut my cheeks.

They just respond to my begging for mercy by laughing at me. That's when they reveal their motive. More than one of them says the same thing. You helped all those people inside from bullying, but couldn't be bothered to stop our bullying. Pay back's a bitch. One of them backhands me in the face several times.

The attackers circle me closing all escape routes, then they force me on my knees. Once I was on my knees, they alternated between putting a gun in my mouth, threatening to pull the trigger, and playing a game of Russian roulette with a 500 Magnum Smith and Wesson to the back of my head. I was not scared of the gun that they put in my mouth since I could clearly see it. It was a smaller caliber. It was a gun I don't have since I don't like them. It was a Beretta Cougar 9mm.

I never saw the gun that they put against the back of my head, but I would recognize the sounds of the cylinder and hammer from anywhere. I have that gun, but I hate to fire it. That gun has a very distinctive sound to it. I knew the pistol had a 5 round cylinder, so every dry shot, I was getting more and more scared. I knew it was loaded since I heard them loading it. By the fourth pull, I was hyperventilating and begging for them to stop. They did, but they then pistol-whipped me in the head with the gun. The attackers had been handing off the guns between them. During their little game, a guy walked in on them. They threatened to kill him if he said anything. They then forced him to watch the abuse.

When they were done torturing me, they left me hanging in the locker room. They had hung me by my wrist before they give me a "hotshot" of Heroin. They say game over, give her the Heroin.

Before the therapist brought Renee back, they tell her something.

"It's okay to remember what happened to you. You have people here who love you," the therapist says to the sleeping form of Renee. James was still holding her hand. He had been doing that the whole time Renee had been under hypnosis.

When Renee opens her eyes, she looks desperately around the room. The instant she saw James, she threw her arms around him and just cried. James was startled since she was crying harder than he had ever seen. After more than ten minutes of Renee crying hysterically, she is finally able to say anything.

"I remember… I remember what they did to me. I saw their faces. Why did I need to remember what happened to me? I know I could describe all of them to a sketch artist. I can also describe the witness too. He will back up my testimony. He saw most of it," Renee says between the sobs.

"Your testimony will nail these bastards. The police have gotten nowhere since there was minimal direct DNA evidence. They couldn't even find the other witness.


	6. Chapter: A Nightmare for James

Two weeks after Renee had been released from the hospital for her PTSD episode, James and Nae were moving a large box upstairs. James was in the front, and Renee was bringing up the tail end. At the top of the stairs, Nae loses her grip and drops her end of the box. When Nae drops her end, James flies backward. James had been carrying the box, walking backward facing Renee. As Nae drops her box, she starts to fall back down the stairs.  
James was struggling to get to his feet, all while he heard Renee tumbling down the steps. He heard every impact Renee made. James tries to go around the box to go to Renee, but he can neither move the box nor get past it.  
Looking down the stairs from the balcony, James sees Nae reach the bottom. From where he was, he clearly heard an unearthly and gut-wrenching crack. He heard Renee's head impacting the marble tile at the bottom. Looking downward from the balcony, James could clearly see blood starting to pool under Nae's head, and he could see no movement from Nae. Nae had landed face first, hitting the front of her skull on the marble tile. In the process, she sliced a superficial temporal artery when she impacted one of the stairs.  
With him not able to get past the box, James was so desperate to get down, he was willing to do anything. Without thinking or pausing to think, James vaults the balcony and drops the ten feet to the tile below.  
"Nae… Oh My God… Nae, Baby…" James was shouting.  
Finally, getting to Nae's side, he continues to panic.  
"Nae… Nae… That can't have just happened, Baby. Nae… Please, God. Nae… Nae…" as he looks down at the woman, he loves bleeding out in front of him.  
Getting to Nae's side, James frantically checks for a heartbeat. When he found a slow but steady heartbeat at the time, he was momentarily able to breathe a sigh of relief. He did notice that her heart rate was slowly increasing more and more.  
Knowing that Renee had hit her head hard, James ran back to the kitchen to grab a penlight that Renee always kept in the kitchen island's middle drawer. He needed to check the pupils' response to light.  
While overseas, the bases medic had taught both Nae and James some field procedures. On more than one occasion, they needed to help the medic with emergency field operations. Ollie had taught both Nae and James how to do tracheotomies, thoracotomies, and field craniotomies.  
Since at the base, it was just the medic, sometimes he was not able to get to a patient fast enough. Ollie needed to train a couple of emergency medics to perform certain operations in an attempt to buy him time to treat all the injured patients. In total, Nae and James had successfully performed more than twenty of these field surgeries each. This was the first time he needed to do it stateside.  
Getting back to Renee's side, James slowly and carefully turns Renee over, so she was lying on her back. James uses the penlight to check the pupil's response to light and can clearly see that Renee's eyes were fixed and dilated. He knew what that meant, and it was not good.  
Nae's brain was swelling, and it would take too long to wait for an ambulance to get there. Very quickly, James ran into the garage to grab Nae's power drill. He was decidedly not looking forward to doing this, but he needed to buy Renee time for help to get there. He knew that he could do it, so he went ahead and did the surgery.  
Laying Nae on the table, James gets her head in position for him to drill the hole in her skull to relieve the intracranial pressure in Nae's brain. James quickly called 911 to get the ambulance to Nae's house.  
"911 Emergency. What's your Emergency?"  
"My name is James, and my fiancé just fell down the stairs. Her eyes are fixed and dilated. I was a field medic with the Marines. It will take too long for you to get here. I have to perform a craniotomy. I know how to do it and have performed it successfully multiple times. Just please get them here as fast as possible."  
James then hangs up before the dispatcher could talk him out of it. He knew Renee needed it, or he would lose her.  
With Nae in position, James gets ready to drill a small borehole in Nae's skull. On low power, James slowly and carefully drills a small 1/8th inch hole in the back of Nae's head. He knows that Renee's skull is predominantly metal, so he needed to make sure to put the borehole in her Occipital bone. That is the only bone that is actual bone. The rest are metal plates. As James gets through Renee's skull, he stops the drill and reverses it out of her head. Right as he gets the drill out, the bus gets to Renee's house.  
The paramedics rush through the front door to see a relatively large pool of coagulating blood in the center of the entryway. Going through the entryway, they run back through the rest of the house to find James and their patient.  
Once in the kitchen, the medics find both James and their patient. By now, James's arms and shirt were covered in Renee's blood since he had just drilled a hole in Renee's head to alleviate the pressure within her skull.  
"I was an emergency field medic with the U.S Marines, and I needed to perform a field craniotomy on Renee. Her heart rate is still way too fast. It's close to 160, but it needs to be 80," James tells the first paramedic that he sees.  
The medic checks and verifies James's observation.  
"Here I need you to tell me her heart rate while I stimulate her vasovagal nerve to lower her heart rate," the medic tells his co-worker.  
The two medics try to physically lower Renee's rapid heart rate.  
As the medics lower her heart rate, James tries to get Renee to respond to him in any way possible. He had already checked his wife's Glasgow Coma Scale. 3 is the lowest number you can have, and Renee's score was six. Renee would respond to pain, but not to anything else.  
"Come on, Baby. Sweetheart, open your eyes. Come on, Sweetie. You can do it," James pleas with Renee.  
"The pressure is not going down fast enough, and she is developing pleural edema in her lung. I mean fluid is building around her lung, preventing it from functioning properly," one of the medics tells his co-worker.  
In a desperate effort to reduce the fluid building up around Renee's lung, the medics put a chest tube to drain the fluid.  
In the Ambulance  
Inside the ambulance, the medic was trying to stabilize Renee. Despite their desperate attempts to lower her heart rate, it remained dangerously high. Eventually, Renee's heart monitor started going off. Nae was showing early signs of a heart attack.  
The medics were attempting to prevent exactly that from happening. Before the paramedics could do anything about her heart, Renee started to seize. Now the paramedics had to both stop her seizure and reset her heart rhythm. Right as the medics were going to give her a dose of Phenobarbital to stop her seizure, her heart stopped. When her heart stopped, so did her seizures.  
Now the medics can focus on restarting her heart. Charging the defibrillator to 200 joules, they shock her heart. Checking for a response, they find no change. The medics recharge the machine to 250 and try again. Once again, they get no response they crank the joules up to 360 joules and try one last time. This time they get a faint heartbeat.  
"Come on, Baby. You can do this, come back to me," James pleas as he holds Renee's hand. At that moment, the medics notice Renee's heart rate was stabilizing on its own as was now close to normal.  
Going to the hospital, the ambulance was met by Alexx Woods.  
"Oh My God, James, what happened?" Alexx asks her friend.  
"Nae was helping me bring Piper's new bedroom furniture upstairs when she fell backward down the stairs. Hitting her head hard on the way down. I had to perform a field craniotomy to buy the medics time to get there. She seized, and her heart stopped on the way here," James tells his good friend, all while following the medics inside the emergency entrance of the hospital.  
"Alexx, can you call H. I have called so many times. I truly do not want to call again," James pleas with Alexx to make the phone call to tell Horatio that his sister was in the hospital again. By now, James was tired of making that phone call since he has made it so many times.  
Alexx doesn't say anything. Instead, she just nods yes as she walks out into the hallway to call Horatio.  
"Horatio, It's Alexx. Nae fell down the steps and hit her head hard. She is not conscious, and you should probably be here. James asked me to call you," Alexx then waits for a reply from her friend.  
When Horatio finally answered Alexx, he assures her that he was on his way there.  
"Alexx, I will be there in a few minutes. Tell James that I will be there in five minutes." H then hangs up on his long time friend.  
Running into the hospital waiting room, H finds James, and they wait together until the hospital staff can stabilize Renee.  
Back in the Trauma Room  
When Alexx gets Renee back and away from James, she rushes her friend in to get an X-Ray of Renee's skull to find out if she fractured her skull. They would normally do an MRI but with as much metal that Renee has in her skull that would kill her.  
The trauma room staff that was not there when Renee was originally attacked were horrified by what they saw. All of her facial bones were metal. Both eye sockets and both cheekbones were metal. Renee's Temporal, Parietal, and Frontal bones were now completely metal. They did see a small fracture of her Sphenoid bone. The fracture should heal on its own.  
It takes an hour to stabilize Renee then the two of them are escorted back to her room. The two brothers can only wait until Nae wakes up.  
After a few hours of Horatio and James waiting for Renee to wake up from her coma, the two men are rewarded by Renee stirring in her hospital bed. Renee, at first, can't say anything, she can only let out quiet moans of pain.  
Renee didn't open her eyes immediately but rather quickly fell back to sleep. Devoid of energy Renee sleeps for several more hours until she has enough energy to open her eyes and look at her fiancé and brother.  
By this time, James had managed to get Renee on his chest. He was holding her tight. It was Horatio who first noticed Renee's eyelids fluttering.  
"Come on, Sweetie. Open your eyes, wake up," her brother pleads with Renee.  
When James heard that he joins in with pleading his fiancé to wake up.  
"Baby, come on. You can do it. I know you can do it. Wake up, Sweetheart," James pleads.  
Renee slowly opens her eyes, hearing the desperation in her fiancé's voice and wanting to comfort him.  
Looking up with her ice-blue eyes, Nae makes eye contact with James and manages a weak smile. Having made eye contact with James, Nae looks out to lock eyes with her brother's ocean-blue eyes.  
Renee asked what happened in nothing more than a whisper since the last thing she remembered was walking up the stairs.  
"What happened to me? How did I end up here?" Renee asks the room.  
Since Nae didn't address one of them in particular, both men took turns answering her two questions.  
"Baby, you were helping me move Piper's new bedroom furniture up the stairs. You lost your grip and fell down the stairs." Is what James tells Renee.  
Her brother finishes explaining what happened to her.  
"Nae, you hit your head hard on one of the stairs. James needed to drill a hole in your skull to relieve the pressure. You would have never made it if he didn't do that," Horatio finished telling Renee what happened to her.  
There was nothing that Renee could say. She just pulled James close and hugged him tightly.  
"You saved me," She whispers.  
"The bigger questions are who's Piper? Who are you? And why are you calling me Nae? I don't know you, or do I?" She intensely asks the room.  
"Renee, Sweetie. This is not funny. I have known you for twenty years. We are engaged." James tells Renee, with tears forming in his eyes.  
"We can't have known each other for twenty years. I am only eighteen years old," Renee tells the room.  
James and Horatio just look at each other.  
"James, you knew her then. I am useless in this situation," H tells his soon to be brother-in-law.  
Looking from Horatio to Renee, James tries to help Renee remember.  
"Renee, what is the last thing that you remember?" James tries to figure out where Renee was in her head.  
"The last thing I remember was jumping on a grenade in Marine Boot camp. Speaking of boot camp, aren't you a fellow recruit from boot camp?" Renee tells James and her brother the last thing that she remembered.  
Allowing a small smile, James looks back at Renee.  
"Yes, that's me, we first met at boot camp," James tells Renee. By now, he has a much better idea about how to approach the problem.  
"Sweetie, you and I went through boot camp together. We also served five tours of duty. You and I have been through a lot together," James continues to help Renee remember.  
James could clearly see Renee trying to remember anything about their relationship or the last twenty years.  
At that time, Alexx walks in to see Renee awake.  
"Baby, you woke up," she asks her friend.  
"Alexx, Nae doesn't know who we are. She thinks that she is eighteen years old. I asked her what the last thing that she remembered was, as she says, jumping on the grenade in boot camp. Nae recognizes me but only vaguely. I am just a fellow recruit," James tries to tell Alexx what was going on.  
"Sweetie, I'll send someone in to talk to you," Alexx tells the room as she scurries out the door and down the hall.  
"Hello, my name is Dr. Colleen Walker, Dr. Woods tells me someone is having trouble remembering," a new doctor says as she walks into the room.  
"You appear to have retrograde amnesia. Often this type of amnesia comes back on its own, and sometimes it never comes back. Can you get someone who has known her before her memory left? Is there family or a friend from childhood. They would have a better chance of helping her remember?" The doctor asks James and Horatio.  
Neither man answered the doctor. Instead, they both look at each other. There is only one person that they could call. Shorty Gorham had been Renee's best friend since Preschool. If anyone could help, Nae remember it would be him.  
"I need to call Shorty," James says to both Renee and Horatio. He then stands up and walks out of the room to call Shorty.  
Seeing James leave, Renee looks at Horatio. "You both know, Shorty?" Renee asks her brother.  
Horatio didn't tell Renee that he was her brother. He didn't want to freak her out.  
Outside in the hall was a conversation that was if anything awkward, to say the least.  
"Hey, Shorty. It's James. Before you say anything, Renee is fine. She fell down the stairs and now has amnesia. She thinks she is eighteen years old. Horatio and I want to ask you if you can come. The doctor says that if anyone can reach her and help Nae remember, it would be someone who has known her before her memory blanked. Since you have known her since Preschool you have the best shot at helping." James finally finishes asking Shorty to help.  
"James, I'll be on the next flight. It's only Monday, If it's not figured out by Friday, I will get Frank to cover for me at the next PBR event." Shorty finishes talking to James and quickly finds a flight inbound to Miami International Airport.  
A few hours later, James gets a phone call from Shorty.  
"James, I just touched down in Miami. I will get a taxi to the hospital. See you as soon as I get there." Shorty then hangs up on James and runs down to baggage claim to grab his duffle bag.  
Less than half an hour later, Shorty ran into Renee's hospital room.  
No sooner than Renee sees him, Renee shouts his name and motions for him to come close.  
As soon as Shorty got there, James went to the hall. He needed to wait for his daughter, who was due to get there after school.  
Not long after Shorty got to the hospital, Piper comes running into Renee's room. She needed to be there for Nae. For the last month, Piper had been working on a genealogy report for her school. During her research, she found out something very startling. What she found out was way beyond life-altering. It was improbable, but it also explains a lot.  
Piper's mom Mac was adopted at birth. That part was not new information to Piper. What was new was the date, time, hospital, delivery doctor, and mother's name were identical to Renee's. Renee was Mac's fraternal twin sister. They were separated at birth and adopted through a closed adoption with sealed records. Piper wanted to tell her dad and Renee what she found out.  
Getting to Renee's room, the teen is shooed out since Renee wouldn't remember who she was.  
"Piper, Baby. Nae has amnesia. She will not remember who you are. Let's let Shorty try to help Renee remember who we all are. She does remember him since they have known each other since Preschool," James tells a clearly worried Piper.  
In tears, Piper tells James about the connection between Renee and Piper. James was beyond shocked at the news. He kept looking from one birth certificate to the other. The connection on paper was clear. Mac and James never learned anything about Mac's birth parents. To be honest, they never tried to learn anything.  
If they looked, it didn't say anything about it being twins. Mac and Renee's mom knew it was twins, but she put them up for adoption at birth and went home to commit suicide by hanging herself with a belt. Their father was also Horatio's father. He sexually assaulted their mom and beat his wife so bad she died from her injuries. In a desperate attempt to save his mom, Horatio was forced to shoot and kill his father in self-defense.  
With Piper still in tears, James pokes his head into Renee's room to get Horatio's attention.  
Horatio walks out into the hall to see what James wanted.  
"What's up, James. You look like you saw a ghost." Horatio asks his soon to be brother in law.  
James doesn't say anything. He just hands Horatio the paper's that Piper had handed him.  
When Horatio realizes what they were and what they said, his jaw hung loose.  
"Are you sure?" Was the only thing that he could say to both Piper and James.  
"It matches, and the records are verified. You are my uncle, and Nae is my aunt. It makes sense since everyone is always asking if Nae is my mom. The only difference is our eye color." Piper tells Horatio.  
Horatio was pleased with this information since it explains why he felt so connected to Piper since he met her when she was just two years old. It also explains why he stayed with her at the hospital when she was shot and why he worked so hard to solve her shooting a few years earlier.  
The entire time that James, Horatio, and Piper were in the hall talking, Shorty was in the room talking to Renee. Before James or Horatio could stop her, Piper runs into Renee's room, crying.  
"I know you don't know who I am, but you have to remember my daddy. You have to remember James." Piper pleas with tears streaming down her face.  
"Baby, I'm trying. For the life of me, I can't remember that emotional connection that I supposedly have with him."Renee tells a clearly scared teen.  
Just outside the door, James heard what Renee had just said. At that moment, he had a Hail Mary idea and rushes inside to do it before he talked himself out of it. James pushes past a confused Shorty.  
Rushing to Renee's bedside, he pulls Renee close and kisses her passionately. Renee never fought him; instead, she just melted in his arms. From Renee's point of view, when James kissed her, everything came flooding back. All the memories and trauma. She remembered everything that happened in the last twenty years. It all came flooding back in twenty seconds.  
As James pulls back, he could clearly see tears streaming down Renee's cheeks.  
"James, Baby. How did you know that would work," Renee asks her fiancé the pressing question.  
With surprise in his eyes, James asks Nae an important question.  
"You remember, Sweetheart. You remember me, your brother and Piper?" James was crying while he asks Renee the question.  
"I remember everything until my head hit the tile floor at the house. Did I not remember you for a while," Renee asks while she kisses James.  
"Baby, you told Piper you couldn't remember our emotional connection. I knew that we fell in love on the first day of boot camp. You remembered me as a fellow recruit, so you knew me. You loved me then, so I just took a shot in the dark. I didn't know that my attempt would work, but it might work, and that was a big enough chance for me to take to get you had retrograde amnesia for a while you thought that you were eighteen years old again. That is why we brought Shorty in. He knew you since you were in Preschool," James says as he kisses Renee back.  
When Piper realizes that Renee was back, she jumped up on the bed and handed Renee the papers that she had given to her dad and Horatio.  
"What is this Sweetie," Renee asks a clearly excited teenager.  
"It's a copy of your original birth certificate and a copy of Mac's original birth certificate. You and mom were fraternal twins separated at birth and adopted out individually. The fact is that you are my aunt and Horatio is my uncle. Don't worry. It's not weird since you didn't know about it until now, so you falling in love with daddy and getting engaged to him is not strange in the slightest," Piper tells a shocked Renee as she curls up next to Renee and hugs her tight.  
"That does explain why both Mac and I fell in love with you, James. We both had the same taste in men," Renee whispers to James.  
"Piper, this is your unofficial uncle. Uncle Seth. You can call him Uncle Shorty if you want since everyone calls him Shorty. I have been best friends with him since we were in Preschool. I know you met when I had the infection, but you never met officially. Shorty, this is my niece and soon to be daughter Piper." Renee introduces two of the most important people in her life to each other.


	7. Chapter: Mystery Solved Reveals A Beast

Chapter: A Mystery Solved by Revealing an Inner Beast

When Renee remember everything that happened to her in the last twenty years, she started to have night terrors again. The terrors had been under control as long as James was there with her. Since her amnesia the terrors have been getting more and more violent.

Seeing his fiancé going though them again, and him being powerless to keep them at bay was just killing James. He knew that he had to do something to help Renee heal. James also knew that she would never be able to heal and get past the event without any closure.

After a month Renee's terrors were getting borderline dangerous for both Renee and James. On more than one occasion Renee woke up with a blood curdling scream. When James tried to comfort her she aggressively lashed out and nearly punched James square in the jaw. By this time James knew it was coming so he managed to effectively block the punch. Pulling Renee close to his chest he would hold her tight until she fell to sleep in his arms. These types of events had started to happen more and more frequently.

James knew that he had to do something for Renee's safety. When James got an email from Renee's best friend Shorty, it sent James into a silent tailspin. Going onto his computer, James made plans to go to Beaumont Texas where she was attacked. His plans remained known to him and only him. When he left Renee he never told him where he was going and why.

Renee trusted him implicitly so she never asked him where he was going orAs s why he was going. She didn't think of it for a week. It was not until she got a phone call from Shorty that Renee started to really freak out.

"Nae, I don't know if you know what is going on, but I just talked to James. I am worried that he is going to do something not only insanely stupid but life changing. If he does what he told me he was going to do, he will kill the man. The police know who attacked you, but have no evidence to prosecute them. I think James is going to make one of them confess. I don't know what to do." Shorty tells Renee with fear in his voice.

Hearing the fear in Shorty's voice, Renee tells him what to do.

"Shorty, I'm on my way. I know I can talk him out of it. Don't tell anyone yet. Please give me a chance to stop him. The police might get a little trigger happy. I'll be on the next flight down." Hanging up on her friend, Renee pulls out James's laptop to search for any information.

Turning on his computer, Renee finds a video message from James.

"Baby, If you are watching this, please know that I am doing this for you. Your night terror had been under control for months. Since you fell they had been getting worse and worse. You will never be able to get past them and heal until your attackers are brought to justice. Shorty just told me that that was not going to happen unless one of them flips on the rest. I have gone to make one flip on the rest. I don't know how I will do it but remember I love you."

When Renee saw that she frantically searched for any other clue as to where he was going to go. As soon she was able to figure out where James was she drive like a madwoman to the airport. Using her police siren to get to base quickly, she ran inside and jumped on the first military flight there was. The fastest way to Beaumont Texas was flying cargo on a military transport flight. This would get her there in less than an hour and a half instead of the two hours normally it would take.

**Where James Was **

It took James a week to track down on of the attackers. Having finally tracked down one of them. James grabs them and puts a black bag over their heads. With their hands tied behind their backs the attackers doesn't fight back at all.

James takes him back to the scene of Renee's attack. With James as strong as he was, he carries the attacker in a firemen's carry. Getting to the wrestling locker room, James proceeds to kick it in. He quickly drags Renee's attacker back to where they had assaulted and drugged his fiancé.

Pulling of the attackers hood, they quickly realized that they were hanging by their wrists. Looking James in the eye's they try to figure out who the hell he was. Not able to do that, they ask him what he wants.

"What do you want. I have never seen you in my life," was what the attacker says to James.

"You may not know who I am but I know who you. You are Nicolas Michaels and you attacked Renee Kerrigan right here a year ago. I will make this simple for you. You can either confess to it now or I will make you confess. The choice is yours to make," James tells the attacker.

Confused as to who this person was, Nicolas denied any wrong doing. Unbeknownst to Nicolas this was the wrong thing to say to an already pushed beyond his breaking point James.

"You might not know it but what you did to Renee lead to her developing severe PTSD. She can no longer be a cop or a Marine. It caused her to start to self asphyxiating in a desperate attempt to sleep. The psychological torture you put her through caused night terrors so bad that she can't sleep unless she makes herself pass out. She will never be able to get past it until you are brought to justice. I will get you to confess to it or I will kill you to get it. Oh and I will leave no evidence of my involvement to your torture and murder." James says that before he rapidly approached Nicolas and puts a clearly loaded Beretta Cougar 9mm inside Nicolas' mouth and pretends to pull the trigger.

Again James asks Nicolas to confess to his involvement in Renee's assault. Again Nicolas denied any involvement.

This time James takes out the 500 and clearly loads the gun. Making Nicolas seeing that the gun was loaded, James then puts the loaded 500 to the back of Nick's skull. Dry shooting the large pistol at the back of Nick's skull. James asks for a second time for Nick to confess.

James continued this procedure until he was three shots into the guns cylinder of five shots.

**With Renee**

By now Renee had managed to track James to the school. Parking her car rental in the parking lot, Renee could clearly hear a single shot ring out. Fearing she was too late, Renee runs as fast as she could to the boys wrestling locker room. Getting to where James and Nick were she was very relieved by what she saw.

Renee could clearly see that James had shot the tile right next to nick. James however beat Nick severely. In fact Nick was barely alive.

Getting to James side she pulls him back.

"Baby, please. Don't do it. Come with me, we can go to the witness and I know I can convince him to talk. I was a team mate of his wife Roxie. I can get him to talk. We can leave Nick here and call an anonymous tip to the police about his whereabouts. Lets just clean up the scene and leave no evidence of us ever being here. Nick cant hear anything since you ruptured his ear drums when you beat him. The only thing he can hear is a very loud ringing," Renee pleas while she pulls James away from Nick.

Having successfully pulled James off the proverbial ledge, Renee and James load up into her car and drive off. Before they left Renee went to the office and erased all the security footage and disconnected the parking lot camera. Where Renee had parked was not covered by the camera but they still needed to make a get away. Renee was thinking ahead and wanted to make sure that they couldn't find out she was there since she had put four layers of latex gloves on when she opened the office door and erased the footage. As far as Beaumont PD was concerned with Renee and James were never there.

Having removed all the evidence and footage of them Renee took James to Roxie and Jason Danson's house. Renee knew where Roxie lived since she send them a Christmas card every year.

While driving to Roxie's house Renee called the police to let them know about a beaten person they saw at school in the boys wrestling locker room. Since it was anonymous on their tip line Renee and James avoided getting caught and were still able to make sure he was found alive.

Getting to Roxie's house, Renee and James walk up to the front door and knock.

"Hey, Rox. Can I talk to Jason. You remember my attack at the reunion. Well Jason was the witness to it. At the time I didn't realize it was Jason that walked into the locker room. Seeing his ID come through by facial recognition I realized I can talk to him." Renee makes her plea to her old friend.

"Jason, Sweetie. Can you come here. Someone here wants to talk to you." Roxie shouts down the hall to her husband as she guides Renee and James to her couch.

Sitting down on the couch Renee and James wait patiently for Jason to get there to talk to them.

They didn't need to say anything. Jason knew what they wanted as soon as he saw Renee.

"I didn't want to talk to the cops but for you since my wife loves you dearly if you ask I will talk. I really hoped that it would go away." Jason tells them.

When Renee heard that she stood up and gave Jason a tight hug. "I can call the investigating officer Detective Jill Bentsen, I can have her come here and take both our testimonies and kill to birds with one stone so to speak," Renee offers Jason.

Jason nods his head yes.

"Detective Bentsen, It's Renee Hope Kerrigan. I am in town and managed to talk the witness into talking after all. If you can come to his house you can interview him and I and get our testimonies. If you want you can bring a partner and get both our testimonies at the same time. Maybe with two testimonies you can trick one of the attackers into flipping on the rest of them. It can't hurt to try can it." Renee then hangs up on the detective and the four of them wait of the police to get her.

"It takes about fifteen minutes for the police to get to Roxie and Jason's house. Detective Bentsen and her partner Detective Eric Ohlson arrive to take the victim and witness's testimonies.

With Renee in one room and Jason in another room. It left Roxie and James alone in the living room waiting for their partners to get back.

As Renee walks back to James, the three of them can hear Jill talk to dispatch.

"Are you sure. Michaels will flip, but he will not say who beat him. He just can't keep lying anymore. I'm with the victim now I will tell her the news. Looks like we get the rest of them. With a victim, a witness, and a flipper will should have enough evidence to convince the DA tp prosecute the attackers," Jill then walks into where James, Roxie, and Renee were sitting.

"Sweetie, It looks like someone beat us to one of the attackers. He was beaten pretty badly but he agreed to flip on the rest. The DA said that if we could get either the witness to talk or a suspect to flip she would prosecute to the fullest extent of the law. It looks like we have both of them. With Michaels flipping and now Jason talking and your testimony we will get the guys that attacked you." Jill says to a clearly relieved Renee.

"Do you need us to stay here or come back for the trial," Renee asks Jill.

"I don't think that will be necessary but the DA will call if you do. I think that we will be fine with two corroborating testimonies," Jill tells an anxious Renee.

When Jill tells Renee and James that they could go, they jumped on the next flight home. On the plane, Renee turns to James.

"Baby, what were you thinking. Do you realize if you killed Nicolas you could have gotten the death penalty. They flip the switch in Texas fast. Promise me that you will not take things into your own hands ever again. You are lucky I came and got you off that proverbial ledge. You were so close to really making a mistake you would not never been able to take back. I love you," Renee tells James with tears in her eyes. She then pulls James close and kisses him. At this point she didn't care if anyone saw her do it. She wanted to kiss James.


	8. Chapter: A Family Nightmare Relived

While James and Renee were in Texas, Piper had been staying with Maxx. Her Family Story paper was due in a week, and the teenager was still researching her mother's side. Piper had already found the news story of James' parents being killed when a drunk driver hit their Nissan Sentra head-on.

The only good side of the story was that the drunk driver was also killed. He had plowed through the sedan and slammed into the concrete median, causing his truck to explode in a giant fireball. Luckily James was not in the car when the accident happened. His parents were going to pick him up from a baseball game that he was a player. James was in a little league as a pitcher.

Since it was just the three of them, James was sent to a group home. At the home, he met Mark. Mark had been in the home for two years before James came. The two of them quickly became inseparable. When they turned eighteen years old, they both joined the Marines. The two both only agreed to serve if they could always have the same tours of duty. By that time, James and Mark were pretty much brothers.

That information was not new since her dad had told her that part before. Piper was more curious about her mother's side. So far, she had found out more life-changing information about her mom than she thought was possible.

The more she learned, the more she was torn. What she was learning was sad but also fascinating.

Piper just found out that Renee and Mac were fraternal twin sisters separated at birth and adopted out individually with sealed records. That made Horatio her uncle and Renee, her aunt.

She was nervous about asking her uncle what she needed to know. She needed to ask for the police report of both his mom's attack and the sexual assault of her grandma. I don't need your mom's report in its entirety just about that one night.

These were big pieces to the puzzle of her family story.

"Horatio, It's Piper. I am still working on my family story project for school. I was hoping that you could get me a copy of Renee and Mac's biological mom's assault and your mom's police report. I don't need your moms report in its entirety just about that one night. The night she died. I want to include your mom since she is family too," Piper waits for an answer from her uncle.

"Sweetie, I need to ask your dad, but I have no problem getting you those reports since they are closed cases," was what Horatio tells his niece.

Hanging up the phone with Piper, James calls James to ask him. Horatio felt that Piper was old enough to read the report but wanted to check with her father first.

"James, Horatio calls James to ask him. James, Piper, asked me if she could read Mac's mom's police case file as well as my mom's."

James's answer surprised Horatio. "H, I trust your judgment. If you feel comfortable giving her what she wants, then give it to her. Her project is due before I will be back, so go ahead."

Horatio still had a connection at NYPD. Calling an old friend, he gets them to fax him the police reports of both Mac's mom's assault and his mom's homicide. He has read his mom's file so many times he knows everything that is in it.

With the reports in his hand, Horatio heads to Maxx's house to give Piper the files. As it happens, Maxx doesn't live very far from him. Only off a few blocks.

"Piper, here is the information you requested. Good luck on your project, Sweetie," Horatio tells her as he kisses her forehead.

Piper ran inside to her room and started to read the police reports. In her reading, she found out that her mom and Renee's biological father was a piece of work. Not only did he sexually assault their mom, but he beat his wife to death and beat his kids.

Horatio had given Piper his mom's police record in its entirety, not just the night she died.

The teen quietly read the name on the file, "Mary Caine." What Piper read was heartbreaking. Horatio's father was a violent alcoholic who would beat his wife to the point of unconsciousness on more than one occasion.

More than once, the paramedics were called to their apartment. Having admitted his mom with blunt trauma repeatedly, the police were getting close to taking action whether or not his mom was willing to report it.

His mom was running out of excuses with multiple broken arms, ribs, cheekbones, and eye sockets. One night Horatio was on duty when he got a 10 16 Domestic disturbance. The address was all too familiar to him. It was at his mom's apartment. Since he was the closest Officer, he called in that he was on his way.

Getting to his mom's apartment, he finds his mom beaten severely. He checked her for a pulse and found a weak one. At that moment, his father comes out of the backroom and charges Horatio. In a desperate attempt to save his mom and stop his father, he is forced to shoot and kill his father.

Calling it into dispatch, "I'm Detective Caine I have a 10 72 Officer-involved shooting with a 10 52 Ambulance requested. While he waited for the ambulance to get there, Horatio held his mom. Unfortunately, before the ambulance got there, his mom died in his arms. Internal Affairs investigated the Officer Involved shooting, and Horatio was cleared since the shooting was ruled a justifiable use of force.

That was all in Horatio's mom's file. Piper hadn't even gotten to Renee and Mac's mom's assault file. Then she needed to read the police file on her suicide. What Piper had read about Horatio's father made Piper more than furious with him and sympathetic with Horatio.

Placing Horatio's mom's file off to the side of her desk, she picks up her grandma's assault file. Again the teen reads the name on the file, "Claire Palmer." Piper wanted to read the assault file first so she would have a better understanding of what was going on in her head when she committed suicide.

When she read the date of the attack, she realized that Claire was assaulted the same day that Horatio was forced to kill his father.

It happened a few hours before that moment. In a drunken state, Horatio's father had gotten confused and burst into the apartment below his. This apartment was a nineteen-year-old student. Her mom had run off with her boyfriend, leaving Claire to fend for herself. With his father drunk as a skunk, he sexually assaulted her before he realized what he had done. He threatened to kill Claire if she told anyone. She was still trying to process what happened when Claire heard a single gunshot.

Very quickly, she found out that the person who just assaulted her was dead. She immediately went to the police and filed a report. Six weeks later, she wants to her doctor for a check-up and found out she was pregnant. His father was the only possible father of her child. Two weeks later, she goes in for an ultrasound and finds out that she is carrying twins.

The doctors tried to convince her to terminate, but being the good Catholic girl she was, she refused since it was not their fault. She couldn't punish them for the actions of their father. Claire had already decided that she was going to split the twins and put them up for adoption. She wanted nothing to do with them after giving birth. Claire went to all her appointments and took great care of herself while pregnant, but was humiliated beyond wanting to live anymore. As soon as the twins were born, she went home and hung herself with a belt. With no family, no one found her for days.

A few days later, Horatio was called to a Wellness check since Claire had missed her last two doctor's appointments with no explanations. That was very out of character for the teen. Getting to the door, Horatio could smell that something horrible was on the other side of the door. Kicking the door in Horatio made a horrific discovery. His mom's teenage neighbor was still hanging in the closet with a belt.

Mac was adopted by a two-parent family Luke and Annie Magnum. The two raised her in New Orleans. When she met, James was shortly after both of her parents were killed in a single-car accident. Her father had fallen asleep behind the wheel, and they slammed into a telephone pole at an excessive speed, killing both instantly. Mac could speak fluent French and Spanish.

Renee was adopted by a single woman named Marie Kerrigan, who raised her on a farm. Renee's mom was the French teacher at the local college in Beaumont, Texas. During Renee's fifth tour of duty, her mom died of a heart attack. That happened right before Renee was kidnapped for the second time. Since she didn't have any family, she didn't go home for her mom's funeral. According to Renee, there was no point. Renee was able to speak seven languages before she even graduated high school. She was proficient in three more. As of now, Renee can speak either fluently or proficiently; French, Spanish, Russian, Farsi, Maori, Dari, Pashto, Hawaiian, Navajo, Hebrew, Italian, Portuguese, and Mandarin.  
Piper was in complete shock when she finished reading the files. The information about what happened to the twins had been added by Horatio to help with Piper's paper.

Looking at her paper, Piper was confident that she would get an "A."


	9. Chapter Justice Delayed, Justice Denied

Back in Beaumont Texas

Nicholas Michaels was still healing from the beating that James had given him. By this time, he knew who it was that had attacked him, but he was not going to tell the police. After when James had told him, Nick couldn't blame James for lashing out. Nick wanted to help, so he called the detective in charge of the case and wanted to talk.

"Hi, Detective Bentsen, I'm Nicholas Michaels. I want to talk about Kerrigan's assault. Can you come to the hospital and talk to me?"

"Nicholas, I'll be there in a few minutes." Detective Jill Bentsen hung up with Nicholas and drove to the hospital to talk to the only suspect willing to talk about what happened inside the boy's wrestling locker room.

Getting to Nick's room, the police officer walks in and gets the suspect's testimony.

When Detective Jill Bentsen questioned Nicholas, he identified the three who would turn on the two leaders. He also ID'ed the two leaders.

"Nicholas Michaels, are you willing to answer some questions regarding the assault of Renee Hope Kerrigan last year at your twenty-year high school reunion?"

"Yes, I will answer any questions you have."

"Can you identify any of the other assailants who took part in the assault?"

"Yes, I can ID all of them. Only three will be willing to talk to you, though."

"I just want to first say that I tried to get the others to stop but didn't listen. Myself I didn't do anything other than hold the pistol. I had nothing to do with the beatings, the threats, nor the druggings. That was mostly the two leaders. The other three didn't really do anything violent to Renee, but they did put the gun in her mouth and threatened to pull the trigger. I understand that just holding the gun and pointing it at someone is illegal, so I will accept my time, but I will not go down with the two leaders. Those two are the real monsters. The other three will verify what I am saying. There was Tucker Abbott, Sean Ericsson, and Matt Grisham. Those three will talk, but good luck getting John Gribbs or Albert York talking. They think that they are too smart to get caught."

Nicholas Michaels was too scared before to turn on the rest of them, but when he heard about how severe an assault had caused Renee, he was shocked. The bullying was nothing compared to what Renee went through. He only had his lunch money stolen, but nothing more severe than that.

The rest of the group had varying degrees of bullying. One was physically bullied, and another was pushed into his locker. The two leaders weren't really bullied. They were just never picked for any of the teams. Renee was the star athlete. They were convinced that if she put it in for them, they would have been picked. In reality, they were terrible players, so no matter what, they would not have been picked.

With the other assailants ID'ed, Jill sends her partner and a couple of other officers out to bring them into custody.

Tucker, Sean, and Matt started talking immediately, and they all turned on John and Albert.

According to all the assailant's John and Albert were not only the instigators with the attack; they also put the gun to the back of Renee's skull and played Russian Roulette with Renee's skull and a 500 Magnum Smith and Wesson. Those were also the ones who gave Renee the drugs both times. The other assailants only did what they were told to do.

With four attackers all pointing to the same people as the leaders, as well as Jason also corroborating the attacker's statements plus Renee's testimony, they had more than enough to file charges against them.

The ones who talked all get deals, the best deal went to Nicholas since he was first, and they only had his fingerprints on the Cougar pistol handle but nowhere else. Jason and the others all said that Nick was the least involved and tried to stop it from escalating to the level that it did.

The one attacker who flipped on the rest was forced into it. He was bullied in high school, and Renee didn't do anything to stop it, but he also didn't want to grab her. By the time she was taken, he was too far in to escape.

He never did anything violent against her; he was just there. Being there alone made him guilty of deadly conduct. Deadly conduct is recklessly and knowingly pointing a firearm at or in the direction of another whether the actor believed the firearm was loaded. The flipper is arrested on third-degree felony assault, but those charges are dismissed. He gets 2 years for deadly conduct charges since his fingerprints were found on the Beretta Bobcat.

The leader and the rest of the group are arrested on enhanced second-degree felony assault charges and deadly conduct charges. Sentenced to 20 years in prison for the assault and 2 years for the deadly conduct.

Charges went from third-degree felony assault to second degree since they knew Renee was a cop, and they drugged her, causing her to lose consciousness. It actually caused her to OD.

Tucker, Sean, and Matt all get ten years, but they could have gotten twenty years for second-degree felony assault. They were only sentenced to third-degree felony assault.

Since Nicholas was the first to flip, he got the best deal. Another reason he got the best deal is that he never did anything to Renee. Yes, he held the gun, but that was all that he did. With minimal evidence and his story verified by not only the other three assailants but also Jason, the witness. Renee herself could only vaguely identify Nicholas, and she was the witness.

The DA brought the case to a Grand Jury, who agreed that the case should proceed to trial. The Grand Jury agreed that the suspects should be charged with both the higher crime of First Degree Felony Aggravated Assault and the lesser crime of Second Degree Felony Aggravated Assault.

Nicholas pleads guilty to deadly conduct and sentenced to two years. With him pleading guilty, he was not charged with the higher crimes the rest of the group were charged with.

With Nick pleading out, he was one of the Prosecution's stars witnesses. Nick was right when he told the police that John and Albert thought that they were too smart to get caught. Therefore they would not talk and not take a plea deal.

Tucker, Sean, and Matt all took plea deals to testify against John and Albert. The two leader's lawyers tried to convince the jury that the other three were lying and attempting to pin it on their clients. The defense team's story came crashing down when Jason was questioned by both the Prosecution and the Defense. Jason was a witness and therefore had no reason to lie. When Renee's testimony was also read in, it just further buried John and Albert.

As the trial proceeded, Albert and John were looking more like the unhinged individuals that they were. With all the evidence and testimonies, the Prosecution rested its case. This left the Defense to prove their innocence. There was not much that their lawyer could argue away. Renee and Jason had no reason to lie about what happened.

Unable to argue Renee and Jason's testimonies away, they rested and prayed that at least one of the jury sided with their clients.

The Judge sent the twelve jurors to deliberations. Both teams were sent out of the courtroom until the jury was back with a verdict. The whole time Jason's wife Roxie was filming the trial to send it to Renee when it was closed. She was also planning on sending it to the local news since Renee was thought of as a town hero. Roxie knew that the news crew was outside waiting for the verdict.

It didn't take long for the jury to reach a verdict.

The Judge asked the Jury Forman if they reached a verdict.

"We have, Your Honor," the Forman tells the court while he hands the Bailiff an envelope.

Having read the note, Judge motioned for the Forman to read the verdict.

"We the Jury unanimously find the defendants guilty of first-degree felony aggravated assault. We the Jury sentence the guilty party to fifty years in a maximum-security prison."

Since three of the assailants had earlier pled out, the only two sentenced to fifty years were John and Albert. Tucker, Sean, and Matt all got ten years for second-degree felony aggravated assault. The only one to get a sweetheart of a deal was Nicholas. He got two years for deadly conduct since his fingerprints were found on the Beretta Cougar's handle. He never denied holding the gun, and the other assailants confirmed his minimal involvement.

With the case closed, Roxie ran outside and handed the footage to the waiting news crew. Roxie then sent Renee and James a text message and the footage of the sentencing of the attackers. Rox knew that Renee needed the closure so she could begin to heal from her assault.

Meanwhile in Miami

Renee and James had no idea that the case was already being seen by a Grand Jury and a trial jury. This is until they get a text from a teammate of Nae's.  
Sometime in mid-afternoon on June 12th, James' phone started to buzz. He recognized the buzzing pattern meant that he just got a text message. Picking up the phone to see who it was, he saw Roxie Danson on his caller ID. Seeing the name, he had a feeling as too what it was about.

"Nae, Baby, Roxie just texted. I think it has to do with your attack. I'll read the message and play the attached video file," James shouts down the hall to Renee.  
Right, when James finishes reading the text, Renee comes running into the room. Seeing the look in James's eye, Nae just knew it was good news.

"Roxie says that the two leaders were found guilty and sentenced to fifty years. Three of the attackers pled to a lesser charge and sentenced to ten years. The only one who got away with the misdemeanor charge of deadly conduct was Nicholas Michaels. He was the one to call the detective to talk to. They had no evidence of him doing anything other than holding the gun. He got two years of deferred adjudication. If he stays clean for five years, the charged will be dropped," James looks at Renee.

"I can live with that," Renee tells James.

Together the two play the video file. Much to Renee and James' enjoyment, they see the leader's reaction to their verdict and sentencing. To say that they took it hard would be a gross understatement. The two grown men broke down, crying like little school girls.

The end of the video told them to turn the TV on the story got picked up by ZNN and other networks across the country.

Turning on ZNN, they see the case on National News.

"A local hero police officer went home to her high school reunion only to get attacked. Her case just finished. Let's go to our local affiliate in Beaumont, Texas, with the story."

"Last year Beaumont Texas had its class of 1998 twenty-year reunion. The small town got word that their local town hero was coming. K-9 handler Master Sergeant Renee Hope Kerrigan had not been back since she joined the United States Marine Corps right out of high school. Kerrigan is a highly decorated war hero. When she got there, she was grabbed by fellow classmates who they blamed for their bullying. Her boyfriend James O'Shea found her with the help of her former Marine K-9 Charlie. She had been beaten, drugged, and assaulted. Her case just closed, and they were sentenced to fifty years. This just proves the old saying Once a Marine Always a Marine. Now back to you in Miami."

"Kerrigan, Is it just me, or did she fake her death on our news channel a few years ago in order to draw out a drug lord who wanted her dead since she and Charlie were always stopping his plans."

"Yes, that was her. She was also tortured and beaten a year before. It was leaked that she died, and her brother was non-only than Lieutenant Horatio Caine of the MDPD crime lab. This woman can definitely kick-ass, and she doesn't give up."

"Now, on to other news stories."

When the story ended, James turns off the TV and looks at Renee. Renee makes eye contact with James and hugs him tightly.


End file.
